Judge In Free Speech Case Over Twitter Fight Apparently Fooled By Parody Account

from the ouch dept

We just reported on a good ruling in Canada that threw out a criminal (yes, criminal) harassment case over what appeared to be a somewhat ridiculous Twitter spat. As we noted, basically no one came out of the spat looking particularly good, but to argue that such a spat should be criminal seemed ridiculous no matter how you looked at it. In the ruling, the judge did find that the tweets sent by Greg Elliott were harassing, but that it wasn't criminal because of the circumstances, including the fact that it was a public discussion and many of the tweets involved Elliott trying (perhaps aggressively) to defend himself against attacks against himself. However, as the very first commenter on our post pointed out, and which other reporters have now reported as well, at least one of the tweets that the judge pointed to as an example of Elliott's aggressive language actually came from a parody account.

The tweet in question came from the @greg_a_eliott account, which is ever so slightly from Greg Elliott's real account, which spells his name (as it is spelled) with two "Ls" instead of just one: @greg_a_elliott. But apparently the judge missed that and assumed the following homophobic tweet was from Elliott: The judge specifically cites that tweet in the ruling, and four separate times notes that at least one of Elliott's tweets were homophobic:

His language is vulgar and sometimes obscene, and once inexplicably homophobic...

It didn't really have an impact on the case, as the judge still tossed out the charges, but it does still seem at least mildly problematic, as the judge clearly regularly referenced that tweet, even though admitting that it wasn't in the evidence that was submitted, but which he found on his own. The judge went through a somewhat long explanation, noting that he found the tweet on his own and was at least somewhat confused why it had not been entered into evidence originally, suggesting that the search tool used by the police, called Sysomos, did a bad job.

Again, in this case, it didn't really matter, but this may be something to watch out for in future cases, where such mistakes could have a huge impact.

Filed Under: canada, criminal harassment, free speech, greg elliott, harassment, parody account, twitter fight