Online Casinos Responsible for First Amendment Issue in O.J. Case
One cannot help but watch, with slack-jawed amazement, the never-ending legal arguments that have appeared before America in the O.J. Simpson trials. Even as the second nationally followed trial of the ex-football star waits for appeals, new and bizarre points are raised.
According to Clark County Circuit Court Judge Jackie Glass, the reason she withheld information from the press regarding juror questionnaires was due to online gambling sites. Glass told the Nevada State Supreme Court that at least three offshore Internet gaming venues were accepting bets on the trial's outcome.
This worried the judge that gamblers may make a attempt to tamper with the jury, and led to her decision to not release written questionnaires filled out by jurors until the trial was concluded, and then only in a censored version.
Legal representatives of both the Associated Press and the Las Vegas Review-Journal argued that the matter was not in fact moot, as the judge had ruled. Even though the case was over, attorney Colby Williams said that, without a ruling from a higher court, press in Nevada "will likely be subjected to orders denying access to other court proceedings in the future."
Williams argued that a sample questionnaire should have been immediately available to the media, and completed forms made public once the jury was impaneled.
While information regarding personal identification is normally withheld, Judge Glass decided not to provide a wealth of other data, including where jurors were born and raised, their parents' occupations, whether they had children, and whether they owned a home.
The absurdity of blaming online casinos for this mess is apparent. It seems that Internet gambling sites have simply become the victims of bullies throughout the American legal system, and piling on is encouraged.
