NYT said:Where’s my pancakes, read Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, in a message typed on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11:49 a.m., from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
At the time, the sentence, written in indecipherable street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — words that were gobbledygook to anyone besides Mr. Bradford.
But when Mr. Bradford, a skinny, short 19-year-old resident of the Farragut Houses, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery, the words took on a level of importance that no one in their wildest dreams — least of all Mr. Bradford — could have imagined. They became his alibi.
His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the status update had actually been typed from a computer located at 71 West 118th Street in Harlem, as Mr. Bradford said. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.
“This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” said John Browning, a lawyer and member of the Dallas Bar Association who studies social networking and the law. “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.”
With more people living their lives online and out loud, social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and online Web communications including photos and videos, are providing evidence in legal battles ranging from murder trials to employment lawsuits.
Up to now, social networking transactions have mostly been used as prosecutorial evidence, Mr. Browning said. He cited a burglary case in September in Martinsburg, Pa., where the alleged burglar checked his Facebook page — and left it open. The police followed the digital trail to Jonathan G. Parker, 19, of Fort Loudoun, Pa., who was arrested.
As part of his defense, a suspect in an Indiana murder case, Ian J. Clark, claimed he was not the kind of man who could kill his girlfriend’s child. But remarks he was found to have posted on MySpace left him vulnerable to character examination, Mr. Browne said, contributing to his conviction and a sentence of life in prison without parole. Mr. Clark appealed, but the admission of the MySpace comments was upheld last month by the Indiana Supreme Court.
In civil cases, too, online communications have helped bolster evidence — especially in divorce cases , where they are often used as proof of cheating.
And they have bolstered employment cases: an employee who said he was too sick to work at his desk was found to have been well enough to add numerous and long posts to his personal blog, nearly every day, Mr. Browning said. And postings by a probationary sheriff’s deputy Brian Quinn, 26, of Marion County, Florida, on his MySpace page led to his firing in June 2006 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Among other things, Mr. Quinn had posted a picture of himself in uniform, along with comments about his job, women’s breasts, binge drinking and nude swimming.
Such cases are becoming more prevalent in part because Congress in 2006 mandated changes to the federal rules of civil procedure, expanding the acceptance of electronically stored information as evidence.
“There have been a number of cases where parties have been sanctioned severely for failure to properly preserve and turn over electronically stored information like e-mails and MySpace messages,” said Mr. Browning, who is writing a book for a legal publisher about lawyers and social networking. “This information is assuming a much more pivotal role in discovery in federal court cases.”
Now, with use of a Facebook update as an alibi, such communications may also be used to prove innocence, he said.
Another robbery charge was already pending against Mr. Bradford. So when he was picked up for the Oct. 17 mugging, he faced the possibility of more severe penalties were he convicted of the multiple crimes.
The second arrest was for the gun point mugging of Jeremy Dunklebarger and Rolando Perez-Lorenzo, in the Farragut Houses, between Bridge and Prospect streets at 11:50 a.m. that Saturday, according to the criminal complaint read by Mr. Reuland. One of the muggers pressed a gun to the waist of Mr. Perez-Lorenzo, and demanded his wallet, the complaint said. The robbers got away with his cash and credit card.
Mr. Bradford contended he was in Harlem, visiting his father at the time — a claim supported by Mr. Bradford’s father, Rodney Bradford Sr., and his stepmother, Ernestine Bradford, Mr. Reuland said.
Mr. Reuland acknowledges that, in principle, anyone who knew Mr. Bradford’s username and password could have typed the Facebook update, but he regards it as unlikely in this case.
“This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil,” Mr. Reuland said, adding that the Facebook entry was just “the icing on the cake,” since his client had the other alibis.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, said the case was sealed and he could not discuss details of it. But he acknowledged that Facebook was key to the dropped charges.
“The prosecution contacted Facebook,” Mr. Bruno said. “We were told of this alibi and we contacted people, researched and discovered that it was accurate.”
But Joseph Pollini, who teaches in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said prosecutors should not have been so quick to drop the charges.
“With a username and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page,” he said.
“Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers,” he said. “They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.
“So they could develop an alibi,” he said. “They watch television, the movies, there is a multitude of reasons why someone of that age would have the knowledge to do a crime like that.”
Mr. Reuland praised the district attorney for being open-minded enough to pursue the Facebook alibi.
“The D.A. did a good job,” said Mr. Reuland, who is still defending Mr. Bradford for the earlier armed robbery charge. “She wasn’t out collecting trophies; she worked overtime to ascertain the truth.”
Mr. Bradford, who has stayed in Harlem with his father since that case was dismissed, said he is thinking about hanging around with a different crowd and going back to school to become an electrician. Meanwhile, his friends have taken to calling him the “Facebook Kid.”
As for those pancakes: “I used to really like them,” Mr. Bradford said. “Now I love ‘em.”
http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/his-facebook-status-now-charges-dropped/
Where's my pancakes?
