Canadian Lawyer

26 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m The lynch mob was a repudiation of everything that is good about the law. Until recently, it seemed extinct, a relic of a horrible bygone age, but sadly, like a monster in a horror movie, it has been born again, this time wearing a digital disguise. Twitter, Facebook, and their pale imitators allow, even encour- age, the instant assembly of a group whose members come together to self-righteously condemn and destroy someone who, for whatever reason, has offended them. Members of such a vigilante group typically are vague on the facts and have not thought seriously about the issues. They are nothing more than a mob baying for blood. This appalling development is some- times called "public shaming." One of the most famous victims of digital pub- lic shaming is Justine Sacco, whose 2013 tweet from Heathrow Airport before she boarded a flight to Cape Town, an inept attempt at irony and humour, was interpreted as racist by some ("Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!"). By the time Sac- co's flight landed, through a process of re-tweeting coupled with extreme (and sometimes obscene) comments, she was infamous, her reputation was in tatters, and she had been fired by her employer. Sacco has yet to reconstruct her life. Which brings me to Jian Ghomeshi. You may remember in October 2014 allegations surfaced from a variety of sources that Ghomeshi had sexually assaulted several women. The Twitter- sphere exploded. Initially, there were expressions of support for Ghomeshi and doubt about the allegations, but the tide quickly turned. After the first few hours, almost all those who tweeted about Gho- meshi assumed the allegations were true and reviled him in extravagant terms. Within a few days, he was fired from his talk show job. His public relations firm dumped him. His friends turned their backs. His publisher cancelled a book contract. His agent dropped him. He went to California to hide out. All this took place before criminal charges were laid — that happened about a month later. Whatever the out- come of his trial — and he may be found not guilty — his life and career have been substantially damaged if not completely wrecked. Then there is the recent case of Min- nesota dentist Walter Palmer, by now the most famous dentist in the world. Earlier this year, he used a bow and arrow to shoot Cecil the Lion in Zimba- bwe, apparently contrary to local law. At the end of July, news and photos about Palmer killing Cecil somehow got on to Twitter and Facebook, and Palmer's world went mad. On just one day, July 29, there were close to a million tweets about the incident, almost all of them L E G A L E T H I C S O P I N I O N @philipslayton DUSHAN MILIC Combatting the lynch mob Lawyers should do their part to fi ght the crude persecution whipped up by Twitter, Facebook, and the like. By Philip Slayton Billie Holiday, in her 1939 song Strange Fruit, sang: "Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." She was singing about lynch mobs. In the southern United States, in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century, mobs of white people lynched black men for crimes that were presumed and never proven. Historians estimate about 3,500 black men were murdered in this way. With some notable exceptions, the legal profession looked the other way. B

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