Cellphones increasingly a problem for the courts
ST. LOUIS -- One of the top fears of court officials is that jurors or witnesses in criminal cases will be publicly outed and threatened or intimidated.
During a double-murder trial this year, St. Louis prosecutors claimed that a relative of the accused was photographing jurors with his cellphone’s camera and posting the pictures on Facebook.
Less than a week later, on Nov. 5, a victim in a criminal case in St. Charles County Circuit Court was caught taking a picture in court.
A month after that, it happened again, in the St. Louis murder trial of Rico Paul. A woman was shooting pictures with her Samsung Galaxy cellphone when she was spotted.
Courts generally ban picture taking, except to allow some limited news media photography on a case-by-case basis. St. Louis courts also once banned cellphones with cameras, when those were uncommon, but relented when it became almost impossible to find a phone without a camera.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/27/3983163/cellphones-increasingly-a-problem.html#storylink=cpy