Should Your Online Profiles Be Used Against You in Court?

In 2006, when NYPD officer Vaughan Ettienne and his partner told a jury they had found a gun on an ex-con (who claimed it was planted), the jury didn't believe him. Ettienne, you see, had destroyed his credibility online, with his MySpace mood the day before the trial ("devious") and his Facebook status update a few weeks before ("Vaughan is watching 'Training Day' to brush up on proper police procedure.").

According to Ettienne, "You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street. What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room."

We see his point, but let's not forget when Facebook played a part in the conviction of 19-year-old Leon Craig Ramsden, who wrote that he felt "like killin some1" before stabbing a man at a bar in the midst of a three-day drug-and-alcohol binge.

Is what you post on social-networking sites fair game in court?