Ted Lothstein and Richard Guerriero Presenting Criminal Seminar - Ethics in the Age of Social Media

On June 26, 2013, Ted Lothstein and Richard Guerriero will be speakers at a criminal litigation presentation chaired by Ted Lothstein called Ethics in the Age of Social Media.

This CLE, which also features presentations by a county attorney prosecutor and by the Professional Conduct Committee chief counsel, will address ethical issues posed for attorneys in criminal cases who use social media to investigate witnesses and jurors, or to promote themselves and their firms. Here is the New Hampshire Bar News ad for the CLE:

Ethics in Social Media Bar News ad 6-27-13 ab

This is a hot topic - we will discuss scenarios like the one unfolding this week in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, which reported a Cleveland-area prosecutor was fired after he impersonated an accused killer's girlfriend on Facebook in an effort to get defense witnesses in a murder prosecution to change their stories. You can read the story here. After being fired - and facing at least the possibility of criminal prosecution himself for tampering with witnesses - the prosecutor was unrepentant, saying that police officers lie all the time to get people to tell the story the police want to hear, and that he merely did the work that the police officers should have done in the first place.

It will be interesting to see if the next newspaper headline will announce disciplinary proceedings against this rogue prosecutor! --- Ted Lothstein