This one is for all the members who think their social media posts won’t get them in trouble

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Jeff White

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Army Sgt CONVICTED of killing BLM protester amid George Floyd unrest


https://mol.im/a/11950919

The prosecutor used his social media posts to convince a jury his claim of self defense was invalid:

On Friday, a jury found Perry guilty of murder, but not guilty of aggravated assault.

Perry's defense attorneys, in their closing arguments, insisted that he had no choice but to shoot Foster five times as he approached Perry's car with an AK-47 rifle.

Prosecutors said Perry had plenty of choices, including driving away before he fired his revolver.

Guillermo Gonzalez, prosecuting, said Perry's posts on social media showed he was vehemently opposed to protesters.

Perry also said that in Texas you could get away with shooting them.
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Perry also said that in Texas you could get away with shooting them.

How many times has that comment or a similar one been posted here?

Here it is, proof that posts made online will be found and used against you in court.
 
I agree that he should have had better sense about what he posted on social media.

However, before all the armchair judges here decide Perry is guilty, you should know that the the prosecutor forced the lead police investigator to remove all the exculpatory slides from his meticulously prepared presentation, approximately 100 of the original 158. The investigator says this constitutes withholding evidence and possibly criminal witness tampering.

See .
 
old lady new shooter said:
However, before all the armchair judges here decide Perry is guilty,
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Perry is guilty. He was found guilty by a jury. If the jury ruled correctly is up for debate. The issue under discussion is the use of his social media posts to attack his self defense claims. We already talked about the tactical aspects of this incident when it happened. If the case was fairly decided is off topic in ST&T.
 
However, before all the armchair judges here decide Perry is guilty, you should know that the the prosecutor forced the lead police investigator to remove all the exculpatory slides from his meticulously prepared presentation, approximately 100 of the original 158.
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That doesn't make sense to me. Maybe one of our attorneys can weigh in, but here's my understanding:

Under the law, potentially exculpatory information must be made available to the defense before the trial. The prosecutor isn't allowed to use his own discretion to decide whether or not to provide the information to the defense and can't withhold it on the basis that he considers it to be immaterial. The defense would therefore have had the information before the trial and they could have brought it up if they thought it helped their case. If potentially exculpatory information information really was withheld from the defense that would likely be a mistrial if it were discovered during the trial. If it were discovered after the trial, it could result in the conviction being vacated. The prosecutor could possibly be disbarred for his actions in either situation.

It's possible that the judge ruled that the evidence was inadmissible and that's why it wasn't brought up. If that was the case and that ruling is questionable, it would be solid grounds on which to base an appeal.

So, if the investigator's claims have any merit, we should see some action from the defense pretty quickly--a motion to vacate the conviction, or an appeal. It surprises me that Gov. Abbott would already be making noises about a possible pardon if there's an obvious problem with the way the trial was handled. He could just sit back and let things work out on their own--that would be preferable, because (among other things) it would ensure that if there was prosecutorial misconduct the people responsible would get what's coming to them.
 
There is no defense presented to a grand jury.

If the defense was aware of those slides at trial they could have gotten them or they could have asked the right questions during cross examination. Those questions are more appropriately discussed in legal. We are getting way off topic for this sub forum. No one in this discussion has seen the trial transcript. Everything is speculation at this point and speculation based on a story on a cable news channel is not helpful. Any report and commentary on cable news is going to be carefully prepared to play to the network’s target audience’s biases and should never be considered factual information when discussing the life and death situations we discuss here.
 
This comes down to common sense. Sadly, that term is seemingly becoming more of an oxymoron in today's society.

If you wish to post things on social media that a criminal prosecutor, or the plaintiff in a civil case, may be able to use against you ... that's your call. Words mean things, whether spoken or delivered in narrative, and the devil may successfully be hiding in the context. If you think you may have to explain something at length to clear up intention and meaning, perhaps it's best not said/posted in the first place.

Bravado and frivolous statements may be transmuted into mens rea by someone else.
 
Jeff White said:
There is no defense presented to a grand jury.

If the defense was aware of those slides at trial they could have gotten them or they could have asked the right questions during cross examination. Those questions are more appropriately discussed in legal. We are getting way off topic for this sub forum. No one in this discussion has seen the trial transcript. Everything is speculation at this point and speculation based on a story on a cable news channel is not helpful. Any report and commentary on cable news is going to be carefully prepared to play to the network’s target audience’s biases and should never be considered factual information when discussing the life and death situations we discuss here.
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We don’t have the benefit of the trial transcript or the pre-trial history leading up to the trial (which would be the motion practice put forth before trial). Without that, all any of us can do is speculate.
 
GNP said:
More discussion on this case by Andrew Branca.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/daniel-perrys-murder-conviction-was-legally-sound/
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I'm going to present an unpopular opinion here. If he hadn't deliberately driven into a protest and shot someone, his social media posts wouldn't have mattered.

Saying he wants to kill protesters on social media really is 10% of his problem, and 90% of the problem is that he actually did it.

That said, it's never a good idea saying you're going to kill people in social media.
 
Popularity has nothing to do with it.

The point of this is to learn from other peoples experiences.

One mistake he made was driving into a protest. We can learn from that by avoiding protests and other situations that are big, noisy and potentially dangerous. It's not always that easy to avoid trouble and when we can, we should.

Another mistake he made was putting material on social media that spoke to a possibly incriminating mindset. That's always really easy to avoid. For one thing, one could, without much real impact, just avoid posting on social media altogether.

It's also possible he made some other mistakes during the actual encounter and we could watch the video and draw conclusions from that.

We can learn from all of what he did. There's nothing that constrains us to focus exclusively on just one of his mistakes. In fact, if he did positive things, we could learn from those things too.
 
JohnKSa said:
Popularity has nothing to do with it.

The point of this is to learn from other peoples experiences.

One mistake he made was driving into a protest. We can learn from that by avoiding protests and other situations that are big, noisy and potentially dangerous. It's not always that easy to avoid trouble and when we can, we should.

Another mistake he made was putting material on social media that spoke to a possibly incriminating mindset. That's always really easy to avoid. For one thing, one could, without much real impact, just avoid posting on social media altogether.

It's also possible he made some other mistakes during the actual encounter and we could watch the video and draw conclusions from that.

We can learn from all of what he did. There's nothing that constrains us to focus exclusively on just one of his mistakes. In fact, if he did positive things, we could learn from those things too.
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"For one thing, one could, without much real impact, just avoid posting on social media altogether."

Except for a couple of internet forums, I do that. I'm no longer on Facebook. I've never gone on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. I haven't missed it.
 
wayneinFL said:
"For one thing, one could, without much real impact, just avoid posting on social media altogether."

Except for a couple of internet forums, I do that. I'm no longer on Facebook. I've never gone on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. I haven't missed it.
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Keep in mind that the same risks apply to emails, memoranda, letters, posts on THR.....
 
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