This photo of Joshua Lipton at a Halloween party dressed as an inmate, which was posted on his Facebook page, was presented by prosecutors at his sentencing in May in connection with a drunken- driving crash that seriously injured a Lincoln women.

PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island inmate is fast becoming a national poster boy for the consequences of having photos online that are damning or simply dumb.

A Bryant University student named Joshua Lipton dressed in a prison jumpsuit for a Halloween party in 2006 — just two weeks after he was charged in a drunken-driving crash that severely injured a Lincoln woman.

A photograph from the party ended up on the Facebook social networking site, showing Lipton with his tongue out, wearing an orange jumpsuit that bore the words “Jail Bird.”

At Lipton’s sentencing in May, a state prosecutor displayed the photo beneath a one-word question: “Remorseful?” And Lipton, 22, of Fairfield, Conn., received a two-year state prison sentence from Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini, who called the photo “a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare.”

On Sept. 8, “Dr. Phil” McGraw included Lipton’s case in the season premiere of his syndicated daytime talk show. The premiere, titled “Busted Online,” began by asking: “Could your child be … one click away from disaster?”

“Well, parents, it’s a wake-up call today,” McGraw said. “Now, the personal photos your sons and daughters are posting online cannot only cause embarrassment and ruin their reputation, but they can also be used as evidence in a criminal trial.”

He quickly summarized Lipton’s case. Prosecutors say that after drinking some gin-and-tonics on Oct. 11, 2006, Lipton left the Bryant University campus in Smithfield to buy cigarettes and was speeding down Route 7 in the rain when he slammed into two cars, including one containing Jade Combies and her sister, Amber. Two hours after the crash, Lipton had a blood alcohol content of .156, nearly twice the legal limit.

And at the moment that Lipton was posing for the Halloween photo, Jade Combies was in Rhode Island Hospital, recuperating from brain trauma and fractures to her femur, hip and collarbone, prosecutors say.

McGraw asked Jade Combies if she was shocked by Lipton’s Facebook photo. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I couldn’t even understand … how somebody could possibly do something like that.”

McGraw asked how she feels about Lipton now. “Sickened,” Combies said. “I hope he learned his lesson. I don’t think he did, but there’s really not much you can do if he didn’t.”

Less than a week after the Dr. Phil show, PC World magazine included the “Jail Bird” shot among the “12 photos that should never have been posted online.” And that article wound up on Web sites such as washingtonpost.com.

Under the heading “Yesterday, Spring Break; Tomorrow, Prison Break,” the Sept. 14 article asked, “What’s a Halloween costume cost? For college junior Joshua Lipton, it was two years of his life.” PC World said there was good news: “The department of corrections didn’t have to issue Lipton a new jumpsuit — he already had his own.”

Lipton has even become news in Canada. A Sept. 11 article posted on Ottowacitizen.com said: “It’s the kind of story usually dismissed as urban legend — but this time, it’s true.”

After explaining Lipton’s case, the Canwest News Service article said, “It wasn’t the first time personal content on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo and even blogs (has) been used by employers, police and institutions to keep tabs on individuals and take action against them.”

Meanwhile, the ABC News program 20/20 has contacted Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch’s office, trying to schedule an appearance by Assistant Attorney General Jay Sullivan, who prosecuted the Lipton case.

Sullivan said social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are increasingly being used as a law enforcement tool. He said such Web sites have been used by law enforcement in the past, but “the Lipton case was one of the first cases where it came to light because of the use of it at the sentencing.”

Sullivan said the “Jail Bird” photo showed a side of Lipton not reflected in the pre-sentence report or in letters that supporters submitted on his behalf.

Attorney general’s spokesman Michael J. Healey said, “The picture was and still is shocking. Everybody knows that most college kids can be knuckleheads. But that picture was so brazen and heartless that it shocked us. And, obviously, it ended up shocking the court, too.”

At sentencing, Judge Procaccini said, “For this defendant to think of mocking and joking about his irresponsible, reckless and life-altering dangerous behavior … is sick, depraved and disgusting.”

Lipton’s defense lawyer, Kevin J. Bristow, said Lipton did not post the photo on his Facebook page; it was placed there by a friend. And he noted that in the photo, Lipton is holding two cans of Red Bull energy drink — not alcohol.

Bristow said that a couple of weeks after the photo was taken — and before the photo came to light — Lipton wrote a letter to the Combies, saying: “I’m writing to tell you how sorry I am for the terrible harm that I have caused you and your family.” Bristow said Lipton wrote the letter although he advised him it would be seen as an admission, and he said the letter “was more indicative of his true feelings” than the Facebook photo.

“Clearly, it was an extraordinary error in judgment to dress like that and go to the party,” Bristow said. “He’s a young man who didn’t know how to deal with what had gone on. Making light of it within his own group of friends was a way he foolishly tried to deal with it, and he was wrong.”

Sullivan said the “Jail Bird” photo was brought to his attention by the Combies family, who’d heard about it from the driver of the other car that Lipton struck that night.

Sullivan said online photos and information can be helpful at various stages in the criminal justice process, ranging from an initial investigation to sentencing. For example, a suspect might deny knowing someone but turn out to be a member of their online chat group, he said.

And Sullivan, who is the traffic safety resource prosecutor, said, “If we are investigating a crash involving teens, we may check Web sites to determine if there are photos showing the drinking.”

Healey said, “I don’t want to give the impression that our prosecutors have the time to troll the Internet looking for dirt on defendants. But the point is: it is a tool, and it wouldn’t surprise us if what happened in the Lipton case happens with more regularity in other cases.”

David M. Zlotnick, a former federal prosecutor who is now associate dean for academic affairs at the Roger Williams University School of Law, said, “Even prosecutors are recognizing we live in the Internet age. The legal system is tradition-bound, but good lawyers look for evidence where evidence can be found.”

A search for evidence is sometimes aided by the exhibitionism that the Internet seems to promote, Zlotnick said. “It used to be that a friend would tell on you,” he said. “Now you tell on yourself.”

Over the years, many crimes have been solved because of bragging, Zlotnick said. For example, robbers have spouted off on barstools, and drug dealers have snapped photos of themselves holding weapons, he said.

“We are social animals,” Zlotnick said. “You really haven’t done something until you tell your best friend you did it.” But now, he said, “On the Internet, everybody is your best friend.”

Still, cases such as Lipton’s are relatively rare because most criminals value secrecy, Zlotnick said. Also, he said, “Most drug dealers and armed robbers don’t necessarily have the most recent Dell lightweight laptop. This still tends to be restricted to immature defendants — college students for whom the Internet is part of their daily activity.”

Prosecutors aren’t the only ones looking at online postings, Zlotnick said, noting that law firms and other employers use the social networking sites to vet job applicants. “In the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they used to say, ‘Don’t do anything you don’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post,” he said. “That’s just as true now, if not more so.”

And the modern corollary might be: don’t do anything you don’t want to see posted on Facebook.

For today’s job applicants, “the resumé you send your employer is not your resumé anymore,” said Michael B. Fertik, founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley company called ReputationDefender Inc. “What people know about you is the top 10 or 20 results on Google, and that’s what they are going to believe.”

Founded in 2006, ReputationDefender bills itself as “the world’s first comprehensive online reputation management and privacy company.” The firm searches for online information about clients and helps to remove “inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful or slanderous information” while also “burying” information on Google search results.

Fertik said the company would not help someone like Lipton. “Most of our customers are professionals and people who just want positive stuff on the top of Google,” he said.

But Lipton’s story shows that “if you put it on the Internet, people are going to find it, and they will make decisions about you based on it,” Fertik said. Think of an online posting as like a tattoo, he said. “Are you going to like this thing when you’re 27, 37, 57?”

Lipton’s story also shows that “people under 25 have no barrier between their online and offline lives, and they just don’t seem to appreciate the difference,” Fertik said. “It’s easy to look at it as an outlier of behavior, but it’s not. The car accident is an outlier, but the totally dumb approach to using the Internet is not.”

efitzpat@projo.com