<\/p>\n
Law enforcement\u2019s announcement Wednesday that Mark Redwine is a person of interest in the death of his teenage son reignited social-media vigilantes who for three years have urged his arrest and, at times, his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuilt is written all over your face \u2026 You can rot in hell Mark,\u201d Susie Stone wrote in response to the news on the Facebook group \u201cDylan Redwine \u2013 The Journey to Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the development in the case didn\u2019t appease Facebook user Tina Christine McCoy Kim, who first became convinced of Mark Redwine\u2019s guilt after watching a \u201cDr. Phil\u201d episode in which his ex-wife Elaine Hall accused him of killing their son on air: Kim reacted by calling for Redwine\u2019s immediate imprisonment, before saying, \u201cThis (expletive) needs to DIE!\u201d<\/p>\n
These posts are the latest example of the Internet\u2019s capacity for extra-legal execution. Online, social-media users\u2019 lust for Mark Redwine\u2019s blood has far outpaced the workings of the justice system almost since the day that Dylan went missing while visiting his father near Durango during Thanksgiving break 2012.<\/p>\n
Though Mark Redwine has not been charged with any crime relating to his son\u2019s death, the social-media campaign against him has been so vicious \u201cas to shock a normal person\u2019s conscience,\u201d Redwine\u2019s lawyer Christian Hatfield said in an interview Thursday.<\/p>\n
Last week, Hatfield told the court that sites like Facebook contain \u201cthreats of violence, death threats, vandalism and intimidation so extreme that Mr. Redwine is forced to live mainly on the road as a trucker.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vitriol has rendered \u201cMark Redwine nearly unable to work, to live in his home without fear, or engage in many of the normal daily activities of life,\u201d Hatfield wrote in response to Elaine Hall\u2019s wrongful death lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Freedom of speech?<\/p>\n
Indeed, by June of this year, if you Googled Mark Redwine\u2019s name, the first result was \u201cCalling Mark Redwine,\u201d a Facebook group with 3,784 \u201clikes\u201d where users posted photos of 6th Judicial District Attorney Todd Risberg to shame law enforcement into more vigorously pursuing Mark Redwine.<\/p>\n
Mostly, it featured hundreds of posts accusing Mark Redwine of killing his son in terms so disturbing that much of its content is unprintable.<\/p>\n
The legality of such sites is unclear, and they are difficult to police.<\/p>\n
In June, The Durango Herald asked Facebook whether the group violated policies forbidding bullying, harassment and threats. Facebook said the group did not violate its standards. Shortly after the Herald began inquiring about the group, \u201cCalling Mark Redwine\u201d went dark without explanation, as did many Facebook-hosted sites of a similar bent.<\/p>\n
Hatfield said that Redwine, whose home, car and belongings investigators have searched repeatedly, would by now have been eliminated as a suspect were it not for the \u201cmedia debacle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Policing despite publicity<\/p>\n
Earlier this summer, La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith told the Herald\u2019s editorial board that investigators were aware of online pitchforks aiming for Mark Redwine.<\/p>\n
In a follow-up interview, Smith said public sentiment was not driving the investigation.<\/p>\n
In a news release issued Wednesday, the Sheriff\u2019s Office said it had designated Mark Redwine a person of interest \u201cbased on evidence collected, inconsistent statements made by Mark Redwine, and his behavior throughout the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But unlike the term \u201csuspect,\u201d the phrase \u201cperson of interest\u201d is legally meaningless, according to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
Hatfield said its nebulousness constitutes \u201ca real statement made by law enforcement (that) they don\u2019t have a suspect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the online furor directed at Mark Redwine has become the emotional, political and media lens through which everything to do with the case is refracted, including law enforcement\u2019s investigation of Dylan\u2019s death, citing the coroner\u2019s reclassification of Dylan\u2019s death as a homicide.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can the coroner do that without a body?\u201d Hatfield asked.<\/p>\n
Coroner Jann Smith did not return requests for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n
Her predecessor, former La Plata County Coroner Dr. Carol Huser, said medical examiners don\u2019t determine cause of death solely on autopsy and lab results, but consider the circumstances surrounding a death.<\/p>\n
She said one reason a coroner might reclassify a means of death from undetermined to homicide is to force law enforcement to take it seriously; another might be to \u201cput pressure on the guilty party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huser emphasized that she could not speak about the specifics of Smith\u2019s decision to reclassify Dylan\u2019s death, because she has no firsthand knowledge of the case.<\/p>\n
But, she said, it was obvious that police \u201cdon\u2019t have sufficient evidence to prove that Redwine killed him, because if they did, he would be in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conviction by social media<\/p>\n
Murder trial by media isn\u2019t new: Just ask O.J. Simpson, Jodi Arias, George Zimmerman and Amanda Knox \u2013 criminal defendants convicted by large swathes of the cable-news watching public years before they ever got their day in court.<\/p>\n
Professor Brian Burke, who teaches forensic psychology at Fort Lewis College, said as a media narrative, the Redwine case has archetypal qualities \u2013 including an acrimonious divorce and a child\u2019s death \u2013 that make it easy for spectators to get invested in its outcome.<\/p>\n
Burke said, psychologically, Redwine\u2019s social-media persecutors are driven by anger at an unjust world.<\/p>\n
As a culture, he said, we know that, \u201cIt\u2019s not fair for a teenage boy to die like that. That\u2019s a major injustice \u2013 and it\u2019s unsettling to live in a world\u201d where a crime like that goes unsolved. \u201cIt feels better to say, \u2018Of course, Mark Redwine did it!\u2019 It\u2019s actually more comfortable psychologically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But criminal defense attorney Hal Haddon, of the Denver-based firm Haddon Morgan and Foreman, said the Internet has given mob-mentality free rein, undermining the justice system\u2019s cardinal tenet: the presumption of innocence.<\/p>\n
Haddon, who has followed the Redwine case, said many of the media dynamics at play in the Redwine investigation are painfully reminiscent of what happened to his client, John Ramsey, the father of JonBen\u00e9t Ramsey, a 6-year-old who was murdered at home in Boulder in 1996.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the state of social media at the time, identical things happened to the Ramseys. Ramsey-haters started websites, email campaigns and blog postings \u2013 all demanding that the Ramsey parents be prosecuted, based primarily on hysterical theories that parents who put their kids in beauty contests had to be guilty of murder. That was the premise of the media firestorm that all happened between 1996 and 1999,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, they weren\u2019t charged,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, in 2008, DNA evidence exonerated them. The district attorney publicly announced that. But by that time, they were ruined. John Ramsey lost his job, reputation and his child. He\u2019s had trouble finding any employment since.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vultures reign<\/p>\n
Denise Hess, a friend of Elaine Hall\u2019s who set up the initial Facebook page \u201cFind Missing Dylan Redwine\u201d after Dylan first went missing in November 2012, said social media could be a powerful tool for locating missing children.<\/p>\n
At first, she said, the site was dominated by people offering support and prayer through family and friends.<\/p>\n
But, she said, beneath the tidal wave of support on social media lay a dark undercurrent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just directed at Mark,\u201d she said, saying Elaine Hall, too, had been savaged by strangers online.<\/p>\n
Others are disconcerted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a lynching,\u201d said Naomi Beans, who learned firsthand the power of an Internet mob after the Herald published a letter in which she defended Mark Redwine.<\/p>\n
Within hours of Beans\u2019 letter being posted to \u201cCalling Mark Redwine,\u201d Durango residents active in the Facebook group were sharing whatever they could find about Beans with the aim of boycotting of her Hallmark store.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnluckily for them, I shut my business two years ago,\u201d Beans said. \u201cI just expressed an opinion in a newspaper. If I was Mark Redwine, I would sue them for libel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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