Arizona Attorney - March 2013

on Tinker and its progeny. In the meantime, legislation may be passed to rein in cyberbullying incidents. Most states, including Arizona, have anti-bul-lying laws on the books. However, only 16 states have added the word “cyberbully,” while 47 states, including Arizona, 19 added “ electronic harassment” to existing statutes. 20 In 2012, North Carolina became the first state to criminalize student-on-teacher cyberbullying. 21 Our founding fathers couldn’t foresee the Internet or the evolution of speech two centuries later. We are left with focusing on this gray and overlapping area of the law, keeping in mind the basic principles of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. AZ AT

Until the Supreme Court considers one of these cases, lower courts will continue to rely

INTERNET

2004 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook.

2005

• Grokster case decision.

• You Tube.com is launched.

2006 Google buys online video site You Tube for $1.65 billion.

2008 In a San Francisco federal district court, Judge Jeffrey S. White orders the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a website that discloses confidential information.

2009 ICANN gains autonomy from the U.S. government.

2010 Facebook reaches 400 million active users.

2011 Twitter and Facebook play a large role in the Middle East revolts.

2012 Facebook goes public.

endnotes

1. Tinker v. Des Moines Indep.

Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503

(1969) (black armbands at school in protest of Vietnam War).

2. Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986) (“public schools may prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse”).

3. Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988) (“Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school sponsored expressive activities,” i.e., student yearbooks, newspapers and plays).

4. Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007) (school officials can censor speech that is “reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use”).

5. Dresser v. Dist. Bd. of School Dist.
No. 1, 116 N. W. 232 (Wis.
1908) (“school authorities have
the power to suspend a pupil for
an offense committed outside
of school hours”).

(W.D. Pa. 2007).

13. J.S. ex rel. Snyder v. Blue Mountain Sch. Dist., 2008 WL 4279517 (M.D. Pa. 2008).

14. Layshock v. Hermitage Sch. Dist., 650 F.3d 205 (3d Cir. 2011); Snyder v. Blue Mountain Sch. Dist., 650 F.3d 915 (3d Cir. 2011).

15. Layshock and Snyder cases, 132 S.Ct. 1097 (2012).

16. Wisniewski v. Weedsport Central Sch. Dist., 494 F.3d 34 (2d Cir. 2007); cert. denied, 552 U.S. 1296 (2008).

17. Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, 652 F.3d 565 (4th Cir. 2011), cert. denied. 132 S. Ct. 1095 (2012).

18. Doninger v. Niehoff, 642 F.3d 334 (2d Cir. 2011); cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 499 (2011).

19. A.R.S. § 15-341( 37).

20. Cyberbullying Research Center at: www.cyberbullying.us (as of November 2012).

21. School Violence Prevention Act, N.C. § 14-458.2.

endnotes Electronic Media in Courts

8. The Prefatory Comment to the 2012 Amendments to the Arizona Rules of Evidence noted in part that restyling “is intended to make the rules more easily understood and to make style and terminology consistent throughout the rules.”

9. In State v. Aguilar, Division One of the Court of Appeals remanded the defendant’s convictions for attempted first-degree murder after trial jurors conducted Internet research to define legal terms. 230 P.3d 358 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2010). In State v. Thompson, an unpublished decision of Division One affirmed a conviction notwithstanding an argument that a juror had done Internet research revealing felony convictions of a co-defendant and a defense witness. No. 1-CA CR 11-0424, 2012 WL 3208682 (Ariz. App. Oct. 24, 2012).

10. An instructive article on this subject is Say What You Mean: Drafting Comprehensible Jury Instructions, which appeared in the February 2011 issue of ARIZONA ATTORNEY. The article, written by attorney Rosalind Greene and her colleague Jan Mills Spaeth, Ph.D., noted that “because of the excessive use of legal terminology, complex sentence structure and other communication flaws, jurors often misunderstand even commonly used patterned jury instructions.”

11. RAJI Preliminary Criminal 13 mentions Facebook, but RAJI Preliminary Civil 9 does not. Neither RAJI Preliminary Civil 9 nor RAJI Preliminary Criminal 13 includes a reference to “friending.” In Sluss v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, an appellate court remanded a murder conviction based on post-verdict evidence that two jurors were Facebook “friends” with the victim’s mother. No. 2011- SC-000318-MR, 2012 WL4243650 (Sept. 20, 2012).

12. A pending rule petition (Supreme Court No. 13-___) proposes these revisions to the juror oath. The affected rules are Rule 47(a)( 3), ARIZ.R.CIV.P., and Rule