NARA: Watergate Trial Records Digitized Ahead of Scandal’s 50th Anniversary. “For the first time since the Watergate scandal broke nearly 50 years ago, the paper records, exhibits, and artifacts from the United States v. G. Gordon Liddy trial are digitized and available to view in the National Archives Catalog.”
Coda Story: Social media companies are facing pressure to start archiving war crimes evidence. How will that work?. “Long before politicians caught on, Alexa Koenig, the executive director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, was working on how social media can be used as evidence in international courts — and how companies can do a better job of preserving it. In the report Digital Lockers: Archiving Social Media Evidence of Atrocity Crimes, Koenig and her team outlined how social media platforms can transform from ‘accidental and unstable archives for human rights content’ to vaults of evidence accessible to investigators and prosecutors. Going a step further, the team at the Human Rights Center created a framework for using digital open source information in international courts.”
Missouri Independent: Appeals court hears arguments over Greitens’ use of self-destructing text message app. “A panel of state appeals court judges heard arguments last week over whether former Gov. Eric Greitens and his staff used self-destructing text-message apps in 2017 to illegally circumvent Missouri’s transparency laws. While Greitens was still serving as governor, it was revealed he and his staff were using a text-messaging app called Confide. The app allows someone to send a text message that vanishes without a trace after it is read. It also prevents anyone from saving, forwarding, printing or taking a screenshot of the message.”
CNN: Dissection by TikTok: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial posts are making accidental influencers out of some, targets out of others. “Sophie Doggett, whose TikTok was previously populated by videos on everyday things such as herself or her pets, posted to her TikTok account on April 25 a clip of Heard’s lawyer asking a question of a witness and then immediately objecting to the response. It is one of many moments in the trial that has been seized upon by people like Doggett, as clips of testimony and references to the case have pervaded TikTok in a way that no trial has before…. Doggett, who paired the clip to playful music, said she gained 30,000 followers seemingly overnight from the post which has, to date, been viewed more than 5 million times.”
WINK: Court scrutinizes Florida crackdown on social media. “Lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration tried to persuade a federal appeals court Thursday to undo a preliminary injunction that blocked a controversial law seeking to prevent social media behemoths such as Twitter and Facebook from stripping politicians and other users from online platforms.”
Times-Union: State Archives find Sojourner Truth’s historic court case. “Buried in 5,000 cubic feet of court records, the New York State Archives has uncovered the 1828 documents thought lost to history detailing how Sojourner Truth became the first Black woman to successfully sue white men to get her son released from slavery.”
Daily Leader: MS Chief Justice issues emergency court order regarding COVID-19. “Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph has issued an emergency order extending the time for COVID-19 safeguards in all courts and giving individual judges discretion to postpone jury trials scheduled through Jan. 14.”
WHDH: Mass. jury trials paused until Jan. 31 due to increase in COVID-19 cases. “The Supreme Judicial Court ordered all jury trials in Massachusetts paused on Friday due to an increase in COVID-19 cases.”
Yale Law School: Project’s Brief Says Consumer Protection Law Applies to Facebook. “The Tech Accountability & Competition (TAC) Project filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit Muslim Advocates v. Facebook urging the D.C. Superior Court to reject an argument raised by Facebook.”
ABA Journal: New database tracks gender-based violence sentencing decisions in the Pacific. “Among the data compiled for each country, the TrackGBV Dashboard highlights contentious factors in gender-based violence cases that could discriminate against survivors when used in mitigation by the court. These include gender stereotyping; customary practices, such as forgiveness ceremonies; and other factors, such as a perpetrator’s religious activities.” The database currently contains information about Samoa, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. Other Pacific nations will be added in the future.
BBC: US cheerleader wins free speech case against her former school. “The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a teenager who was kicked off her school cheerleading squad over a profane social media post. In an 8-1 ruling, it concluded that the Mahanoy Area School District had violated Brandi Levy’s freedom of speech under the First Amendment.”
CityBeat: Court Hands Journalists a Big Freedom of Information Act Win: Gun Data Access. “Reveal, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), originally sued for records in November 2017. The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) never responded. ATF’s gun tracing database lists 6.8 million firearms linked to criminal activity. Reveal sought records for any gun traced back to law enforcement ownership. When Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, modern databases did not exist. ATF argued that a search query exporting the results amounted to a ‘new’ record, which agencies aren’t required to disclose under the FOIA statute. The court disagreed.”
Silicon Republic: Courtsdesk receives £70,000 to build legal database for UK journalists. “Dublin-based Courtsdesk has received £70,000 in funding to build a service supplying listings and outcomes of criminal court cases to journalists in the UK.”
State of Maryland: Appellate court case information now available on Maryland Judiciary Case Search. “The Maryland Judiciary has expanded its public access database, Maryland Judiciary Case Search, to include remote access to case information from the Court of Appeals (COA) and the Court of Special Appeals (COSA), in addition to existing access to cases in the trial courts. The appellate case information is now available online. Case Search now contains COA case information from term year 2015 to present and COSA case information from term year 2016 to present.”
