Email can destroy lives, Brafman warns law students

One of America's preeminent criminal defense attorneys told students at Touro Law Center last week that the seeds of personal destruction lurk in ill-considered emails.

Benajamin Brafman also talked about what it means to be a member of the criminal defense bar, cautioning that not all lawyers were cut out for its rigorous demands.

On emails, the Five Towns resident told students on the Central Islip campus that "I’ve seen lives destroyed by one stupid, errant, snide, interesting, humorous wisecrack that ends up as the centerpiece" of criminal and civil litigation, in securing employment, and "when you’re maybe at a confirmation hearing for being a judge or a cabinet member."

"Think before you hit send, think before you hit reply, think twice before you hit reply all — it’s forever," he cautioned. "The person who gets it can do whatever they want with it, they can forward it to the world."

One bad email or text message "is all you need," he said.

Brafman — whose star-studded cases have included the defense of Dominique Stauss-Kahn and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs  — said that in most of his current criminal cases, the prosecution's evidence includes "an email, a text or something which at the time it was sent did not appear to be devastating" but which looms large in the cold environment of litigation.

He compared the impact of email evidence with that of tape recordings.

"In a tape there is tone," he said. When frustrated parents say they'll kill one of their children, "they don't mean they're going to kill their child."

A tape often reflects what "a person intends by how they say it," he said. But in a printed email, "there's no sarcasm, no humor, no intonation," putting people "one step closer to an incriminating posture."

"I've seen people go to jail" because of it, he said.

Beyond the threat posed by poorly worded emails, Brafman warned that new technolgy poses an even wider threat.

"You do something stupid" — DWI or a minor drug infraction, for instance — and even if "a guy like me comes and gets it dismissed, it will follow you until you die" because the story lives online forever.