We've discussed in the past how tweeting jurors represent a new sort of challenge for courts, who haven't quite figured out what to make of the practice. However, the Arkansas Supreme Court recently overturned a murder conviction and ordered a new trial, because one of the jurors was tweeting occasionally during the case. As in the past, I tend to think this is a pretty big overreaction. From the tweets quoted, it does not appear he actually discussed any specifics of the case at hand, but rather some rather general thoughts:

Mr Franco tweeted: "Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken... We each define the great line."

Other tweets sent included: "The coffee here sucks" and "Court. Day 5. here we go again".

I fail to see how those should lead to the end result being suspect in any way. It doesn't appear he discussed the case at all, but merely shared some of his general thoughts. It appears the court would prefer that he pretend he not even have those thoughts at all. How does that possibly make sense? Denying someone from mentioning what they're thinking doesn't stop them from thinking what they're thinking.

I could have sworn we wrote about this case earlier, but I'm searching around and can't find the post. It involves Daniel Moore, a painter and fan of the University of Alabama's football team. Given both those things, he's been painting portraits of some of the team's biggest achievements. Now, you might think that any normal person (or university) would be thrilled that its fans had taken things to the level of painting artistic portraits of the team's greatest moments. What a wonderful statement. Not the University of Alabama, however. It sued Moore for infringement. And while a court found that there's no trademark infringement if no Alabama logos are shown in the paintings, it also said that, even as such, he was barred from selling merchandise (like calendars) based on his paintings. Robert Ring points out that Moore is appealing the ruling, pointing out (reasonably) that if the paintings themselves don't infringe, it seems pretty damn hard to see why merchandise based on those same non-infringing painting would be barred. I'm even confused why there's an issue if the paintings had included Alabama logos. By that logic, any photographs that include a team logo would potentially be infringing as well, which makes no sense. But the biggest issue is why this is even an issue at all. The University should be thrilled that someone is helping promote their team the way Daniel Moore is.