Yesterday and today I eschewed my normal hiking/cargo pants-o-many-pockets and loud shirts in favor of more respectable attire that included a dress shirt and tie.  And then I sat around, doing a little bit of work, and waited.  I was on standby should I be called to testify as a prosecution witness at the Dallas County Criminal Court in State of Texas v Lindsey Alyn Crumpton (for Manslaughter).  About an hour ago I got an email informing me that my services wouldn’t be needed, as the defendant admitted to the issue about which I would have testified.

Some of my long time readers may remember my previous postings about Lindsey Crumpton.  For those who don’t, here’s a brief refresher/timeline, along with some events that I didn’t detail at the time:

1. November, 2004:  I wrote a short post with my take on a case where a young woman (Ms. Crumpton), while attempting suicide, ended up killing an innocent woman on I-35 by driving across the median.  That post, entitled Deadly Stupidity attracted a couple of comments, including one from the outraged daughter of the woman who was killed.
2. January, 2006: (approximately 13 months after the original posting)  I received an angry, insulting, and vaguely threatening message via my Contact Form from someone who appeared to be Ms. Crumpton herself.  I posted her message, along with my response, in a post entitled You Have Mail!.
3. April, 2006:  I received a message from an Assistant District Attorney with Dallas County, who had found my posts and was very interested in them, as he thought they would be material to the trial.  I went ahead and forwarded him the messages I’d exchanged with Ms. Crumpton.
4. May, 2006:  A relative of Ms. Crumpton (or someone claiming to be) found this site through Google and proceeded to leave a nastygram in the comments to an unrelated post.  I moved the comment and added my reply in More Deadly Stupidity.
5. July, 2006:  The Dallas County ADA called me again to say that the trial was going forward (starting Monday, August 21, 2006) and that he wanted me to testify.  Shortly after that I received a letter and was served with a subpoena to appear as a witness.

I think it can be safely said that the old advice about shutting up still holds in the digital age.  DA’s are now routinely checking online search engines to try to find information about defendants.  I was told by this ADA that he often found incriminating information by looking at a defendant’s MySpace page.

As they say, “anything can be used against you,” and that includes online, provided it can be proven to have come from the defendant.  In this case, I couldn’t say with 100% certainty that it was Ms. Crumpton, since anyone can enter any old email address in the contact form.  However, I responded to the email address that was given and got a reply back.  Further, the email address was of the form her_name -at- hotmail.com.  Taken together, I felt safe in assuming I was dealing with her at the time.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is to shut the hell up if you’re facing a criminal trial.  No matter where you say it, someone will eventually find it and use it against you.

Update: (5:50pm, 8/25/2006)  I just received word that Lindsey Crumpton was convicted.  I am waiting to get confirmation of that, as well as what sentence she may receive.

Update 2: (11:30am, 8/26/2006)  More on the verdict here.