The Case of the Twittering Witness

From Law.com: “Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Scott Silverman declared a mistrial in a civil fraud case Wednesday after being informed a witness on the stand in his courtroom had engaged in text-messaging while the judge spoke with attorneys during a sidebar conference.” Techdirt is right in suggesting that the intersection of the “new media” with our old institutions is going to raise more and more problems like this one:

It seems as though very few people have really thought through the implications of the many channels of communication that every individual now has with them, and how that changes common assumptions about how people can and will communicate, even in “constrained” areas.