Case provides valuable guidance to judges on how to responsibly handle social media connections and communications.
Judge sent defendant to prison for assaulting defendant’s girlfriend. Defendant appealed his sentence claiming, among other things, that the judge was not impartial, given that the judge was Facebook friends with the girlfriend-victim’s father, and that the two of them had communicated through Facebook’s private message feature. The appellate court held that the judge did not err by not recusing himself.
The appellate court found that no rule prohibited the judge from being Facebook friends with the victim’s father. And the judge followed the proper procedure concerning the private message by:
- discontinuing reading it once he realized it pertained to the case
- warning the victim’s father not to communicate ex parte in that manner
- printing the message out and placing it in the case file
- notifying counsel for the parties
Moreover, the private message was not adverse to defendant, but actually asked for leniency. On these facts, the court found an insufficient showing of bias to find reversible error.
Youkers v. State, — S.W.3d —, 2013 WL 2077196 (Tex.App. May 15, 2013)