MasonBuzz.com reporter Rachel Richardson
Enquirer reporter Rachel Richardson covers the Mason community at www.MasonBuzz.com. She tweeted updates throughout Ryan Widmer’s third murder trial live from the courtroom at Twitter.com/Mason_Buzz.
Allison Rotundo had always dismissed Twitter as a banal stream of mindless inanities or irrelevant posturing from celebrities.
Then the 24-year-old Mount Lookout woman discovered The Enquirer’s live Twitter feed – twitter.com/Mason_Buzz — of the Ryan Widmer murder trial and became a Twitter convert.
“I am addicted to live trial tweets,” said Rotundo, who works in a legal office. “My co-workers know to check with me for the latest updates on the trial because they know I have my Twitter feed in an open browser somewhere on my desktop.”
A jury convicted Ryan Widmer of murder Tuesday in the 2008 drowning death of his 24-year-old wife, Sarah Widmer.
News outlets, including The Enquirer, brought a blow-by-blow commentary of the trial to computers and mobile devices across the state and around the country via Twitter, a social networking site that allows users to send and receive messages – or “tweets” – that are limited to 140 characters.
Tweet: Very graphic autopsy photo. Must be very hard for Sarah’s family to see. Most family members seem to be looking down, including Ryan (Widmer)
Tweet: (Jennifer)Crew: Ryan said “I did it, I did it, I killed Sarah. I did it.”
Tweet: VERDICT: GUILTY OF MURDER
Throughout the three-week trial, followers learned, if succinctly, details of the case, as well as who was fined for a ringing cell phone and about colorful courtroom characters, like “Brad the Bailiff.”
Among those following The Enquirer’s coverage of the trial was Tracy Heinrichs of Edgewood, who said she followed the feed “constantly,” even while at work.
“Every time my computer told me there were new tweets, I checked it,” she said. “I felt I had more knowledge than just somebody watching the news.”
Mason resident Ryan Petrey, who followed trial updates on his smart phone, said he appreciated the interactivity of being able to ask questions and have them answered by the Enquirer reporter, Rachel Richardson, who tweeted the trial.
“Twitter offered a whole new view of the trial,” he said. “It gave the normal person an inside story of what was happening in real time right from the court room. It was like reading a book that was being written in real time.”
User @illtreaturite1 agreed: “This is better than court tv!”
‘A feeding frenzy’
Public fascination in high-profile cases such as the Widmer trial has always existed, said Cincinnati lawyer Mark Krumbein, but now social media sites like Twitter can better satiate that thirst.
“It’s like a feeding frenzy,” said Krumbein. “Reporters are doing a better job at getting out details. People can now find out details that no one could have found out 5 to 10 years ago.”
But the increasing saturation of social media technology is also creating trouble for the courts in ensuring the fairness of court proceedings, say legal experts.
Around the country, judges are creating new procedures on allowing cell phones in the courtroom or allowing the media to tweet from courtrooms in efforts to balance the public right to know versus the courts’ responsibility to ensure a fair trial.
In 2009, U.S. District Judge Clay Land in Georgia denied a Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reporter’s request to tweet live updates from the criminal trial of an attorney charged with corruption. Last March, the 11 judges in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania’s Common Pleas court barred Twittering, texting and all other forms of electronic communication in courtrooms.
Among the concerns of courts is that Twitter constitutes a form of “broadcasting,” that can allow witnesses to hear the testimony of other witnesses in the same case or expose jurors to information they aren’t supposed to have.
Judge Neal Bronson explicitly barred jurors in Widmer’s second and third trials from using electronic media to communicate with anyone about the case or to gather information on it.
“Some judges and prosecutors are saying that communicating testimony live is not allowed,” said Krumbein. “Now it’s almost unstoppable — all you have to do is use a telephone. You have to really rely on the oaths of jurors and promises of witnesses.”
‘A new era’
Christo Lassiter, law professor at the University of Cincinnati, has written scholarly articles about how televised trials influence cases and says some of the same dynamics can be seen in new media trial coverage.
“The comprehensive and instantaneous nature of electronic media means that audience interaction now plays a part in how trial participants react,” he said.
“Technology innovation is a concern for courts. The new technology makes it harder and harder to limit dissemination of information that makes trial participants vulnerable.”
Live media courtroom updates have the ability to color the public’s perception about the case – and of the integrity of public officials and the judicial system itself – which can then circle back to lawyers, witnesses and other trial participants, says Lassiter.
Electronic media “brings the trial close enough to the public for the public to actually have an impact on the trial,” he said. “The advent of Twitter increases the speed of the individual feedback.”
Tweet @shaffeja: “I went in thinking the guy was guilty after listening to the 911 call and reading the paper from the previous trials… but following all your updates on this trial I have more than enough reasonable doubt. Prosecution did terrible.”
Tweet @CKinCincy: “Two jury’s found him guilty… 33 of 36 over three trials. Twitter feeds don’t do the evidence justice.”
But as Krumbein and Lassiter agree, it will be difficult for the courts to put the genie back in the bottle on social media in the courtroom – nor do many online spectators want them to.
“This is a new era in reporting,” said Petrey, the reader who followed The Enquirer’s Twitter feed of the Widmer trial on his cell phone.
“What’s the point of reading a paper when you can get the news live as its happening? You don’t need a T.V. or paper anymore — just your smart phone and you’re in the know right away.”
Posted in: Crime, News, Widmer Trial |
