Lady_Starlish
08-09-2004, 07:28 AM
I got up this morning and was checking the news on Yahoo, and obviously this title caught my attention. I'm not from AZ but I thought some of you might like to read this. I think it's awful that he did this, and glad to hear that the Court of Appeals ruled against it.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Arizona sheriff violated the rights of prisoners by using Web cams to broadcast them being booked and held in cells in a kind of "reality show" for the Internet, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision and ruled against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's online venture, which he had argued deterred crime and showed the public how jails work.
In its majority opinion, Judge Richard Paez wrote that the Webcasting amounted to little more than a "reality show" and went beyond what would be considered a reasonable deterrent to crime.
"Exposure to millions of complete strangers, not to mention friends, loved ones, co-workers and employers, as one is booked, fingerprinted, and generally processed as an arrestee, and as one sits, stands, or lies in a holding cell, constitutes a level of humiliation that almost anyone would regard as profoundly undesirable," Paez wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Carlos Bea wrote that using jailhouse Web cams to post images over the Internet did not violate the constitutional rights of detainees.
The Web cams served the same broader purpose as parading white-collar criminal suspects in so-called "perp walks" where people face reporters and are shown on television, Bea wrote.
"Persons arrested cannot choose to whom the fact of their arrest can be publicized," Bea wrote.
Augut 9th, 2004 Yahoo! News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=3&u=/nm/20040806/wr_nm/life_webcams_dc)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Arizona sheriff violated the rights of prisoners by using Web cams to broadcast them being booked and held in cells in a kind of "reality show" for the Internet, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision and ruled against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's online venture, which he had argued deterred crime and showed the public how jails work.
In its majority opinion, Judge Richard Paez wrote that the Webcasting amounted to little more than a "reality show" and went beyond what would be considered a reasonable deterrent to crime.
"Exposure to millions of complete strangers, not to mention friends, loved ones, co-workers and employers, as one is booked, fingerprinted, and generally processed as an arrestee, and as one sits, stands, or lies in a holding cell, constitutes a level of humiliation that almost anyone would regard as profoundly undesirable," Paez wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Carlos Bea wrote that using jailhouse Web cams to post images over the Internet did not violate the constitutional rights of detainees.
The Web cams served the same broader purpose as parading white-collar criminal suspects in so-called "perp walks" where people face reporters and are shown on television, Bea wrote.
"Persons arrested cannot choose to whom the fact of their arrest can be publicized," Bea wrote.
Augut 9th, 2004 Yahoo! News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=3&u=/nm/20040806/wr_nm/life_webcams_dc)