John Paragano, a New Jersey attorney from Brick Township was arrested this week and charged by Chester Township police with contempt of court for allegedly posting a video titled “Superdiva Meltdown” on a MySpace Web page.  There is no indication as to what profile this was posted on.  Mr. Paragano denies the allegations although I don’t think that giving a phone interview to the press was really the best move here.  I hope he hires a good attorney that knows how to deal with computer crime and electronic evidence issues.

The video consists of portions of a deposition that Prior gave as part of the divorce action.   The criminal complaint says that the video consisted of “the most emotional, personal and embarrassing portions” of her testimony.

This should be fairly easy to figure out as there are only so many people that had access to the video and IP addresses should be able to show who created the profile and who uploaded the video.  Paragano claims to not have access to the video which I would not have wanted him to say.  By making this statement, he has drawn a line in the sand for the police to prove that he did have access to the video.  If they can show this alone, his credibility will be at issue. 

The stakes are also high here because he is an attorney.  Besides his reputation, any conviction here could lead to other ethics issues. 

Putting the proof issues aside for a moment, I don’t see how this allegation would be criminal conduct.  If you have access to a video of a person and you do not edit it to make her say things she did not say, you would be protected by the 1st amendment.  Of course, the prior history of the entire case and the alleged editing will be used to show that this was harassment.  In other words, this is going to be drawn out and get messy.  

I don’t know the guy, but like I said, I hope he has a good attorney.  He’ll need a new one because his divorce attorney may be a witness in this case.  The John Paragano story is here.