Citing Lauderdale Attorney's Fine, NY Times Describes Perils of Mixing Law, Social Media

Broward County's legal system is an ultra-cynical reality show set in a leaky, creaky courthouse, where an honorable attorney's ideals get murdered with weekly regularity -- as surely as Kenny gets whacked on South Park. That culture is a disease. Attorney Sean Conway's blog diatribe against Judge Cheryl Aleman? That's...

By Thomas Francis

September 15, 2009

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Broward County's legal system is an ultra-cynical reality show set in a leaky, creaky courthouse, where an honorable attorney's ideals get murdered with weekly regularity -- as surely as Kenny gets whacked on South Park. That culture is a disease. Attorney Sean Conway's blog diatribe against Judge Cheryl Aleman? That's a symptom.

So in a local legal system that's so deeply flawed, it's novel to fret over what the New York Times calls the "collisions between the freewheeling ways of the Internet and the tight boundaries of legal discourse."

Ha! We'll totally start worrying about that. But what's the hurry? We're just getting around to letting loose a guy who was brow-beaten by police into confessing to a murder he didn't commit and who's spent the past 26 years in jail. Dangers of social media = back burner.

The article leads with Conway's case, but after detailing the attorney's legitimate objections to Aleman's penchant for giving defense attorneys a mere week to prepare a case (when a month is more common), it gives a shrug to Conway's being punished by the Florida Bar Association. See this Pulp post for a more appropriate reaction to that move. A legal system that's relied upon to protect the state's whistleblower's act apparently isn't ready to extend the same protections to its own. And this is yet another troubling phenomenon that must be dealt with before we worry about a prosecutor's Twitter feed.

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