I do have some concerns about the impact of all this on the lawyers. They do not generally practice with the expectation that all of the discovery will be viewed and commented on by the public. This, and the general interest in true crime by average joes and not established news organizations, is new. The older established news organizations had legal departments to advise them on what was appropriate to disclose and what would be the consequences of disclosure. These new people (basically any Joe with a microphone or a free Reddit account), do not. Some are lawyers, most are not. They may have a strong interest in seeing justice served, but they may not be aware of ways in which their own conduct could inadvertently jeopardize that. This certainly adds a layer of complexity to the legal strategy, and it’s annoying and distracting, I would imagine, for the lawyers who would like to pay attention to preparing their case outside the glare of the public eye. Such is life now, I guess. But the justice system is not entertainment and treating it as such may not serve the public interest and may lead to unfair situations for the lawyers and the system. Of particular concern to me, for example, is that there are some ex-parte motions which have been publicized on various channels and forums. Ex-parte motions are made by one party to the judge, without copying the other party. While generally each side must copy the other on what it presents to the judge, not doing so is permitted in certain situations with certain justifications which must be made by motion. Publishing them to the world negates the ex-parte nature of these pleadings. In one, I believe, the defense states a reason why he is making the motion ex-parte. Whatever reason he may have, once somebody puts it on the internet, that goes out the window. I realize that Florida sunshine laws permit the public to see all of this. But, Florida Sunshine Laws were enacted to ensure that officials conducted their affairs in the open, and to provide a check on their behavior, from the media, for example, or from those aggrieved by a particular policy or government action. For most of the life of these laws, requesting a document would have involved traveling to a local courthouse or government office and filling out forms and making copies. Only a news organization, or a directly interested party, would have the time and the resources to do this. Things have changed drastically in the past ten years, at a speed and in a manner the state must have found difficult to counteract or address. It was never anticipated at the time these laws were made that so many members of the public would have any actual interest in requesting documents filed in individual legal cases, nor that it would be so easy for them to do so from the comfort of their couch. Why would they, but for the internet?
(Off soapbox now.)