By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 13:17, Saturday, 19 January 2013

A woman has been banned from using Facebook after going on the social networking website to threaten two people who had got her arrested the night before.

Joanne Maxwell, 23, had been involved in an incident with another woman in Carlisle on the evening of October 28.

She was arrested on suspicion of assault.

And after being released on bail next day posted two messages on Facebook insulting her alleged victim and her partner.

The city’s crown court heard that on the afternoon after the alleged assault  the partner complained to the police about the messages that Maxwell had posted on Facebook.

After her arrest, the court heard, Maxwell told the police she didn’t care what effect the messages had on those they had been posted against.

Maxwell, of Botcherby Avenue, Carlisle, pleaded guilty to using Facebook to send information which she knew to be false for the purpose of causing distress or anxiety.

She also admitted breaching the terms of a suspended prison sentence imposed in August 2011 after she broke the nose and eye-socket of a woman outside the Outrageous bar.

Mitigating, defence barrister Keith Thomas said that in recent months probation officers responsible for her rehabilitation after that incident had been impressed by the way she had “turned the corner”.

“She has done all that they could expect of her,” he said.

Maxwell, who is unemployed but has been helping out on a relative’s farm, was put under a 7pm to 7am curfew to keep her indoors at home every night for the next six weeks, put under the supervision of probation officers for six months and made to pay £280 in costs.

The judge also took the unusual step of imposing an order which bans her from using Facebook for three months.

First published at 11:14, Saturday, 19 January 2013
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk