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Robbery Suspect Cleared By Facebook Alibi
postermmxvicom writes "Rodney Bradford has been cleared of robbery charges because of a Facebook update. The defense was able to prove that the update was made from his father's house, 13 miles away from the crime committed one minute earlier. Lawyer John G. Browning said, 'This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence. We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.' Surely, this must be media hype, since it would not be a difficult alibi to fake."
$ at now + 30 minutes
at> curl -d 'status=lol watching tv' http://www.facebook.com
at> <EOT>
job 1 at 2009-11-14 15:36
Now, who to murder first?
But what happens when scripting becomes involved..
Write a script to make a "hey.. not out murdering my wife's lover" post then destroy/shred itself whilst you're out doing your chainsaw work.
So basically,
I can go commit any crime I want, as long as I use a remote desktop/VNC program to remote into my PC at home from my smart phone and post something to Facebook immediately afterward?
SWEET! Time to to rob that bank!
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Not robbing
Say you want to go burglarize someone's house, but you need to make it appear that you're posting on Facebook from your parents' basement? Well there's an app for that too!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
This decision just gave the IP address sword its second edge.
On the one hand, they were using IP addresses to identify and prosecute people for 'illegal' downloading and accessing child porn. Now, someone was aquitted based on their IP address.
Interesting indeed. Probably now, the authorities will realize the futility of using IP addresses as evidence.
Shirley!
Sorry. I am so sorry. I'll leave now. So sorry.
"If I have been able to see so far, It is because I went out and bought a damn binoculars" - Ze da Esquina
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most evidence, with enough effort, can be faked. We usually call those conspiracies.
It would be a great amount of effort for a small robbery to perform this task and to get the corroborating evidence. There is very reasonable doubt that he committed the crime.
SIG: HUP
If lawyers are anything like doctors, they get their information from legal pad salesmen and follow whatever the latest legal fad is, no matter how obviously stupid it is. Keep in mind that half the population has an IQ under 100 and that the civilization would collapse if half the population were excluded from gainful employment. In short, the world is being run by idiots.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
They did consider VPN's and Proxies and fairies too.
They also had witnesses, aka Real People, who also testified he was at his fathers house.
It was corroborating evidence, not the piece the case hinged on.
Once again, Facebook verified what multiple REAL PEOPLE were telling the cops. It wasn't the only piece of evidence.
You love how ignorant people are of the legal profession, I love how people like you are so pompous and know-it-all's they can't even read the article.
Couldn't you just have a friend login to your facebook profile and post a update while you're out committing crimes?
I could have been cleared, but I posted as an Anonymous Coward.
You must be new to /. if you think people read the articles before responding...
One thing that some folks have forgotten here is that the guy was presumed innocent until the prosecution could prove him guilty. If there's evidence from Facebook indicating that he updated his status, then the prosecution would need to show that the guy was using a proxy/tunnel/whatever, or that he had someone else post for him, etc. Otherwise, it provides a reasonable doubt as to whether he was even at the scene of the crime.
Well, it is within the realm of the possible that somebody sat down and applied Occams razor to the possible scenarios: The first scenario involves this bloke (1) planning to rob somebody, (2) setting up a proxy or vpn service and (3) some people conspiring to give false evidence. The second scenario: The bloke was at home and nobody lied.
I posted this in another reply but I see a common misunderstanding: The point is that was a type of crime that was not likely to be premeditated, nor his status update looked like a way to construct an alibi, any crime that can assumed to be premeditated would not be excused by such an alibi.
There's no "lack of understanding of the technology" involved here, is your lack of understanding of the circumstances.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
The prosecutors job is to prove beyond all reasonable doubt. If he contends a piece of evidence is invalid, he has to prove it is so beyond all reasonable doubt. You're the one who doesn't understand. He would have had to go up there and contend that "All of the other guests lied about him being there, and on top of that, he had one of them leave a facebook message in order to exonerate him, and yes, that seems to me a reasonable setup prior to a fucking MUGGING." To repeat. If you're charged with a crime, and your father and other family members all swear you were with them, that's a tenuous alibi, they might by lying to cover you. If somebody from your father's house was updating facebook just minutes prior to the crime, that means either he's not lying, or it means he was engaged with a conspiracy prior to the crime. That is, the accused planned it all out prior to mugging some fucking strangers in his own apartment complex! That's absurd. On top of this...the prosecutor refuses to comment on what evidence there was. There probably wasn't any, they just grabbed the guy who "looked most guilty" when they were canvasing the neighbors, and hoped he'd be too poor to fight it. He lived in the projects, after all. "He's guilty of something, might as well be this."
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
There are a lot of posts saying it'd be pretty easy to fake the Facebook post. It wouldn't even have to be technical: Just call your father and ask him to log on to Facebook under your account and post what you tell him to.
The article doesn't say, but what if this was a crime of opportunity? What if the evidence at the scene and witness's testimonies painted a motive that indicated it was a crime of opportunity, and not a pre-planned crime? If that was a case, then accepting a Facebook posting made at the time of the crime seems pretty reasonable. Maybe he called his father just after the crime, but one minute after an unplanned crime? That feels unlikely to me, too. And anyways, the court had testimonies and other evidence hinting that he wasn't the guy, so I don't think this will set a precedent that Facebook postings should be accepted without question in court.