To tweet or not to tweet?

That question has been left to the judges to decide. It has been an ongoing debate over whether or not tweeting should or should not be done by a reporter in a court of law. Here at the Kingston Freeman we currently have a reporter in the court house covering the murder trial of Trevor “Little T” Mattis and Gary “G-Money” Griffin.

Patti had been tweeting the details of the proceeding for the past three days. The judge has allowed the tweeting to occur because it is a public trial and the public is in fact welcome to come to the court house to attain the same information that Patti is sharing via Twitter.

The court house currently holds about 40 people excluding police force and is at maximum capacity; therefore it seems acceptable for the public who can not fit in the court house to be able to receive information regarding the case on a minute by minute scale.

Throughout the past days the judge only asked the reporter once to delay tweeting about the exit of one of the witnesses, for the safety of the witness. The reporter complied with the wishes of the judge.

Since Twitter has come out the has been a growing debate over whether or not it should be allowed in court proceedings. The Supreme Court this year, decided that it was indeed allowed. This is mainly because cases that get to the level of the Supreme Court have already lost most of their privacy and have already received attention from the press.

When is comes down to the lower levels of judicial proceedings, the use of Twitter is up to the discretion of the judge and differs case by case.

In 2009, a Colorado judge allowed reporter Ron Sylvester to tweet during a murder trial. He was able to convince the judge to allow his to tweet by arguing that it was the same content going to the same audience. The only difference was the rate of speed at which the message is being sent and information is being processed.

Also in 2009, a judge in San Francisco denied the use of Twitter to reporters claiming that Twitter was a form of "broadcast" which is illegal. He used the same grounds that cameras and broadcast reporters are not allowed in court houses.

Outside of the U.S., countries are struggling with the same debate. Australia has made it law that the use of Twitter would be decided on a case by case decision claiming that if it could potentially be dangerous to a witness then it would not be allowed. In 2010, the top judge of England and Whales decided that there would be no ban on the use of Twitter in the courts.

For the rest of the United States, most cases of the use of Twitter are decided on based on the severity and seriousness of the case. Fears of some judges include exposing information to people who have still yet to testify in the case, giving them information quicker than they normally would have gotten it, giving them some kind of upper hand in a case. The other fear is for that of witnesses who are going to be put in danger by the real-time spread of their testimonies.

Is it ethical to be tweeting live from court cases? I agree with the judges who believe that ethics in this case is very situational and must be determined based on the circumstances on the case.