Meet Jodi Arias. She’s currently facing trial for allegedly murdering her boyfriend. And, in this strenuous, difficult time she is, of course… constantly updating her Twitter feed. If you’re wondering how, precisely, somebody behind bars can be Tweeting, here’s how.
She does it through [Donavan Bering,] a close friend Jodi talks to almost every night on the phone.
“She’ll call and say ‘I have a quote.’ We’ll talk about it. Sometimes she says ‘let’s tweet.’ And then she’ll say ‘no let’s not do it.'”
She tends to use it to do pretty much what you’d expect, namely bitch about the court proceedings:
He who tries to establish his point by much yelling shows that his reasoning is weak.
— Jodi Arias (@Jodiannarias) April 8, 2013
Post “inspirational” quotes:
“Nothing lays itself open to the charge of exaggeration more than the language of the naked truth.”- Joseph Conrad
— Jodi Arias (@Jodiannarias) February 16, 2013
And to, rather tactlessly, plug her website and artwork:
Ebay has banned all listings of my artwork. The silver lining in making my art more difficult to obtain is that it keeps increasing in value
— Jodi Arias (@Jodiannarias) February 23, 2013
Needless to say, the fact that she’s trying to cash in on all the publicity hasn’t exactly gone over well with the general public. And sadly, tweets about giving Nancy Grace the finger and otherwise going after the talking head have been deleted.
But at the same time, her Twitter account itself is a weird form of public service. It’s rare that a convict weighs in on their trial while it’s happening, partially because legally the media aren’t allowed to interview prisoners face-to-face. Generally with a trial like Arias’ we only see it from the perspective of talking heads and court footage, rarely from the prisoners themselves.
But there’s nothing on the books saying a convict can’t weigh in, in public, on their own trial. And one suspects this will become more and more common going forward. Just hopefully with fewer attempts to sell art.