As if the Kelly Thomas trial needed any more drama, Judge William Froeberg interrupted Wednesday's closing arguments by defense attorneys to lash out at the audience over photos of jurors posted on Twitter.
“If I find out who took this picture, you're going to jail,” Froeberg said as he held up a printout of the image in his Orange County Superior Court courtroom in Santa Ana.
]
The judge went on to say the picture, in which only one of the jurors (an alternate) can be identified, appeared on a Twitter account of someone by the name Aaron Murphy.
It was later determined by investigators the photo was taken from a live broadcast feed and posted by someone outside the courtroom. A TV cameraman had accidentally caught a quick glance of the jury while adjusting equipment, City News Service reports.
See also: The Complete Kelly Thomas Killing Archives
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.