Well, this is a less to all you would be murderers out there, go leopard-print, always leopard-print. Florida resident Fermin Recalde was on trial for the 2010 stabbing murder of his girlfriend. Then his lawyer posted a picture of his leopard-print underwear on her Facebook account and boom, mistrial.
Of course, I should let you know that this doesn’t mean he won’t face justice and the posting of the leopard-print underwear wasn’t meant to get a mistrial. What happened was, Recalde’s family brought him clothes to wear on the stand. These included a set of leopard-print underwear. Recalde’s lawyer, Anya Cintron Stern, took a picture of the underwear and posted it to her Facebook account with a joke about how they were appropriate courtroom attire.
Stern also made a number of posts on her Facebook questioning Recalde’s innocence.
Stern’s Facebook privacy settings are set so that only people who are friends with her can see her account, meaning one of her Facebook friends ratted her out to the judge. Do we need anymore proof that Facebook has completely devalued the meaning of the word friend? People just accept anyone, collecting friends like Pokemon, and then one of them rats you out to a judge about the fact that you’ve been posting pictures of your client’s leopard-print underpants.
A mistrial was called.
In the end, Stern was fired and Recalde will have to get a new trial. Let’s just hope this time he’ll have learned a lesson and go the full on leopard-print suit.