In a world where social media has become the tallest and most accessible soapbox society has, the verdicts reached by the “court of public opinion” have also become louder and heavier.
And that can be a big problem.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you name it – social media really is more helpful than harmful. We stay in touch better with friends, family and acquaintances; we have access to our interests a lot easier (if it wasn’t for Facebook while I was in the hospital a year and a half ago, I would have completely missed the Star Wars trailer!), and we can learn news and information faster than ever before, sometimes critical information, like about the July 7th shootings in Downtown Dallas.
But after being entrenched for two weeks now in the trial of Enrique Arochi, the man charged for the aggravated kidnapping of Christina Morris at the Shops of Legacy two years ago, I’ve begun to notice social media has also created a monster – a monster with the ability to take opinion, or premature judgment, and transform it into perceived “fact.”
Take an athlete in our own backyard for example – Ezekiel Elliott. On his 21st birthday, he was accused by an ex-girlfriend of domestic violence. The story went viral, it was on just about every news and sports station locally and nationally, and it carried the narrative that he is “just another Dallas Cowboy doing Dallas Cowboy things.”
Turns out, Elliott was acquitted. Actually, no – he was never charged. An investigator in Ohio said no charges were necessary due to lack of evidence, with text messages from the ex-girlfriend eventually being leaked indicating she may have been trying to frame Elliott.
But even though he’s free of any charges in the court of law, there will always be pundits who will label him as a woman-beater, which is entirely unfair to somebody who, according to the law, did absolutely nothing wrong that night.
So as we as a society continue to ride the social media train for as long as its big ol’ engine can carry us, we need to do our part and trust the legal system we’ve put in place and let things play out in the court of law. In the case of Enrique Arochi, or anybody for that matter, the concept “innocent until proven guilty” will always hold weight, no matter how quickly the court of public opinion wants to drop its gavel.
The jury is an integral part to our society – we should trust them to do their civic duty to the best of their ability and not be so quick to cast judgment ourselves.
