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."

Comments

that isn't the real crime here

[Jailbrekr]

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?

Re:that isn't the real crime here

[Jailbrekr]

The fact that you cannot see the immorality of this kind of logic is further evidence of the systemic breakdown of both morality and law within your (our) society. Theft is not murder, but by the twisted logic of your court system, it can be if a homeowner uses lethal force to protect his physical possessions. Now, having said that, I can see where something like this can originate from. If you're getting robbed, and you bolt out into traffic to get away only to be squished by a truck, the robber is culpible. Run over a pedestrian while trying to get away? Culpible. Robbing a house only to have your friend shot and killed by the homeowner? Probably not the original intent of the bill but hey, slippery slopes tend to end up in ridiculous situations like this.

Re:that isn't the real crime here

[Ihmhi]

That's the brilliant genius of the felony murder law.

If someone dies while you're commiting a felony - even if you didn't pull the trigger - you're liable for felony murder.

In this case, I suppose the justification is that if the kids never tried to rob the house their companion never would have died and thus they are guilty of felony murder as a result. Honestly though I think the whole law is too broad and overreaching. There shouldn't be such harsh penalties for an indirect responsibility.

Re:that isn't the real crime here

[kevorkian]

There is a reasonable expectation that the homeowner will defend himself.
How is shooting the intruder any diffrent then running over someone while escaping.
Both were forced by the robber.

The robber put in motion the events could reasonably be foreseen as resulting in the death. If the robbery did not happen , the person would not be dead. I believe that the legal term is 'depraved indifference to human life'.

Re:that isn't the real crime here

[Jailbrekr]

If you can't differentiate between those two acts, where one death is a direct results of the criminals actions and the other death is a direct result of the victims actions, then you shouldn't be debating this. Reasonable expectation of a homeowner defending himself doesn't morally permit the criminal justice system to stick the responsibility of the criminals death on another criminal, no matter how emotionally satisfying that may be.

Re:that isn't the real crime here

[Vegemeister]

The homeowner, who was justified, and the dead man, who cannot be charged.

Felony murder law

[Zatar]

On a complete tangent, reading this article is the first time I've noticed the ugly little details of the "felony murder law".

Under Florida law, individuals involved in a felony resulting in death can be charged with murder.

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.

DJDevon3

[djdevon3]

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".

Re:He will have a hard time geting a job now

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I had one girl shoot me down because she could fine 20 to 30 others with the same name as mine but not me on a google search. She claimed I was using an alias.

You may not believe me, but you dodged a bullet.