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Student Googles Himself, Finds He's Accused of Murder
University of Florida student Zachary Garcia was more than a little surprised to find out he was wanted for murder after Googling his name. It turns out the police were looking for a different man but had mistakenly used Garcia's photo. From the article: "Investigators originally released a driver's license photo of Zachary Garcia — spelled with an 'A' — but it was Zachery Garcia — spelled with an 'E'— who was charged in connection with the crime."
We were looking for Hitler.
slashdotters are googling themselves right now.
He will have a hard time getting a job now.
Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Garcia?
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Next item on "The Rundown" is "Naked Ladies"... I'd rather watch that story.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Who else has heard of the legendary four corners of opportunity? Can you name them all?
The stuffing is a nice place. It's warm, it's stuffy, and there's parades all around!
I googled myself the other day and found out I was murdered!
Am I the only one that noticed "NAKED LADIES" on the news bar to the right of the screen at the start of video? I have the whole internet at my fingertips and I'm thinking "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NAKED LADIES???"
Stories like this make me glad I have a fairly common name that is shared with multiple famous people, including a former NFL player, a dead rapper and a famous architect.
Really sounds like some crappy odds... The guy's name is one letter different and the birth dates are one year apart. This really does appear to be an honest mistake. The two pictures even looked a lot a like. It sounds like he did the right thing and contacted the police and cleared his "name" spelled with an "a" not and "e". I'm sure this isn't the first time something like this has happened but in this case I can see how it did happen.
Close enough.
To quote National Treasure, "Someone's has to go to jail."
Inbefore the obligatory quote from Terry Gilliam's prophetic movie masterpiece Brazil with the mistake between 'Buttle' and 'Tuttle', and the ensuing pandemonium.
-First have an ID made with a minor spelling difference of your name.
-Commit murder.
-When the police look for you point out the minor difference and lead them to believe it is a case of stolen identity.
-Post story to slashdot to make it sound like fact.
-Profit!
So I'm curious if it's a privacy issue to be posting his DOB all over the airwaves and subsequently the net.
The only privacy I have on Google is that I've also got a common enough name that googling me gets a few million hits. The first few pages are about a professional jazz drummer with a similar name, and if you've heard me drumming you know that we're not the same person. You could still google my name and a few keywords and get stuff about me, but I'm not even the only person in my field with my name.
The real travesty is not that law enforcement mixed him up with another kid, its that the kid is charged with felony murder because the homeowner of the house he was robbing shot at and killed one of his friends. While I cannot necessarily condemn the homeowner for his act, to charge the three surviving robbers with murder is ludicrous. One teenager paid the highest possible price for his foolish act, and now the criminal justice system is going to destroy three other lives? what the hell Florida? If I jaywalk with three other people and a motor runs over one of us, are the rest of us guilty of vehicular manslaughter?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
On a complete tangent, reading this article is the first time I've noticed the ugly little details of the "felony murder law".
You'd think that means if you kill someone while committing a felony that you can be charged with murder. That seems somewhat reasonable, although I can think of cases where it would be excessive.
It turns out if you break into a house for a robbery and some other guy that came with you kills someone maybe somewhere else in the house and you didn't even know you can still be charged with murder.
Now, that seems pretty unfair but we find out in this story that they can go even beyond that. In this story a couple of kids break into a house and the homeowner shoots and kills one of them. They then applied this law to charge the other kid with murder!
That's pretty messed up.
This is a funny mistake but... you know... at least it was the civilian police, and civilian courts.
He should be glad his last name isn't El Masri: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri:
On a related note, a friend of mine recently found he had a warrant for issues that are besides the point. Lets just say, dubious charges of a domestic nature. So, upon finding this out, and verifying it, he drove to a friends place to "lay low" while he calls his lawyer and figures what to do next. The advice he got? Interestingly.... go to the court house in the AM and surrender directly to the court. In this case, that meant he a) looked responsible to the judge b) got it over with quickly and c) denied the police (who had only heard the other side of the story) no chance to "recommend bail".
In the end, he walked out on his on recognizance. (well, end of the day, if not the story)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I can empathize with the shock of finding out you're wanted for something this severe that you have absolutely no involvement in. While we lived outside of the US, my brother had his car stolen, so we reported it to the police that very night.
A couple of weeks later, a magazine notorious for reporting on gory crimes with graphic photos (at the time, everyone joked that "blood leaked out of the magazine if you squeezed it hard enough") had both my brother and myself accused as murderers in a crime that involved the stolen vehicle. It turns out that a receipt they found in the vehicle had my brother's name and my family's phone number. It took a while to determine that the victim was related to the author of the article, and after talking with the police, we were able to clear our names and get a retraction printed.
Just change your name and move on!
Oh, wait, they used your picture?
Well, then just change your face and move on!!!
While searching for my own name I found out someone in the same town with the same name was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The guy was nailed for possession of about 3 kilo's of cocaine. The intent to distribute was pretty obvious. Let's just say none of my old friends or girlfriends have ever contacted me since.
Which brings up a nifty scenario if you don't want to be contacted by old girlfriends. Just find a state vs drug dealer affidavit online somewhere, fill in the blanks with you name, create your own legal sounding domain name, and post it. Private reg on the dns is a good idea. This happened to me coincidentally but I was thinking it would work exactly the same if I did it to myself on purpose. It's not illegal to make a hoax directed towards yourself right? It works surprisingly well.
1. Old hats will not take the trouble to wade through the justice system to find your contact info.
2. They probably wouldn't want to after reading your affidavit anyway.
Make social engineering statements in the affidavit to deter old hat resurrection. For female deterrent add things like "hit girlfriend and mother in the face with large bludgeoning tool (baseball bat)". For male deterrent add things like "stabbed neighbor in the testicles with a hunting knife".
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/06/677.asp
So, the way the article is written, it almost makes it sound like he was accused of murder BECAUSE he googled his name. "...surprised to find out he was wanted for murder after Googling his name."
Forget that someone was misidentified...
Excerpt:
"Authorities say Murphy and 15-year-old Otilio Rubio broke into a Davenport home Sept. 22. The homeowner shot at them, and Rubio later died from a head wound.
Under Florida law, individuals involved in a felony resulting in death can be charged with murder. The homeowner was not charged."
Source: http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=149990&catid=8
The actual guy they were after wasn't guilty of murder at all; the crime has nothing to do with murder!, someone died but because of a bullshit law stating that a death during a felony means that those committing the felony are held responsible even if they didn't have any weapons, or intent do kill, it was the homeowner that killed the guy!!!
Damn it people murder is intent to kill, the label is designed to make the prosecutors look like they're dealing justice; this is not justice if you are held responsible for a crime that you did not commit, a massively unjust law.
Garcia and his mother tell us that she is interested in getting all the references on the internet moved from the World Wide Web so nobody gets the wrong idea again.
I don't think this is really possible to remove the entryes but then again who am I to know.
"Just before emigrating to this country,
I had a sex-change operation while aboard my U-Boat,
and I demand Jewish women's rights NOW!"
In August of 2004, the local authorities of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina were called to the apartment of one Joe Smith. Neighbors suspected a suicide.
But Joe Smith was not dead. He was curled up in a ball in the corner of his room laughing and texting himself on his phone.
Before Joe Smith was taken into protective custody, he handed a homemade video to the police labeled MY ALMOST SUICIDE.
This is the transcript of the video.
In four years, Joe Smith has contemplated suicide a further 1,687 times according to Myrtle Beach Clinic records.
But it's hard to follow through when you are so successful.
Even by conceptual extensive transference.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
When the hell are they going to fix the javascript on idle?
Its been broken for years now!
He could have discovered he was dead, but seeing as he was googling he would have then realized he was undead and developing a craving for brains or something.
Anyhow, as long as law enforcement has fully updated things he should be ok, and not in any real danger of the "dead or alive, we don't really care" approach to arrest.
I really know what this kid is going through. back in 1995, I was declared deceased, only I didn't find out until I went in 15 days later to fill a prescription.
At that point, I found out that my insurance had been canceled, and that the medication I needed would not be filled. This was apparently only the
tip of the iceberg. within 2 weeks, my bank account was closed, my credit terminated and my SSI gone. it took me three months and a lot
of pressure from the local news media before social security owned up to the mistake. it was a further year before I could get a bank account
(the credit reporting databases kept reporting me as deceased).
here's the real kicker: I happen to be blind.
sooo, imagine the hellish nightmare this kid was going through. it is comparable to what I went through 15 years ago.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
Obligatory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPNL8yoqUM
Oh, I would totally google her all night.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
A better example would be a case where a guy committed purgery when, on the stand, when he testified that he was with his wife on the night that his wife's sister was accused of drunk driving. Having told his wife that he was at work, he pisses off his wife so much that she pulls out a gun and shoots the Judge, all members of the Jury, and the husband's lawyer. Obviously, he should be charged with murder.
Um, criminal codes typically specify that the felony murder rule applies to specific felonies. A typical list is: robbery, rape or forcible deviant sexual intercourse, arson, burglary, felonious escape, terrorism, kidnapping and carjacking. Perjury ain't on any of these lists that I'm aware of.
There is also a body of legal precedent that lays out guidelines for when the rule applies.
Are you adequate?
In this particular instance it's not an issue due to age and race. Had that not been the case then sure, I might be a little concerned. All employers wanting to hire technicians should do a proper background check instead of the unprofessional results displayed in a google search or worse... social networking sites.
If an employer didn't hire me because they thought I'm that fictitious other guy because of their own unprofessional methods (a.k.a. stupidity) I'm fine with that... I would only end up unhappy and frustrated by working with stupid people anyway.
I googled myself and found nothing, not even a peep, then i thought of course not, I am not really living life, maybe there is a correlation?
( The Big Lebowski reference )
Why, I was accused of rape *and* murder. As a result, I can never got to Thailand for fear of winding up in a Southeast Asian prison based on mistaken identity.