NEW YORK — For 19-year-old Rodney Bradford, a simple Facebook status update turned into much more: a rock-solid alibi after he was accused of a crime.
Confirmation of the time stamp on the update and the location from which it was entered showed he could not have been at the scene of a robbery in another part of New York City. After he had spent almost two weeks in jail, the case against him was dismissed.
The story began at 11:49 a.m. on Saturday, October 17, when Bradford was updating his Facebook status at his father’s home in Harlem. A minute later, 12 miles away in Brooklyn, two men were mugged at gunpoint.
The next day, Bradford, who is facing a separate 2008 robbery indictment, found out police were looking for him in connection with the Brooklyn robbery.
Bradford turned himself in, confident he would be cleared. But after one of the victims picked him out of a lineup, he was charged with robbery in the first degree and sent to Rikers Island, home of the New York City jail.
It wasn’t until Rodney Bradford Sr. discovered his son’s Facebook update that the young man’s defense attorney realized he had an unbeatable alibi.
“Throughout that week,” said the attorney, Robert Reuland, “I worked with the district attorney’s office and made them aware of who our alibis were, presented the Facebook evidence and generally tried to convince them that it would be wrong to proceed to an indictment in light of this evidence.”
The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook for documentation that would prove Bradford had updated his account from his father’s home in Harlem. It worked.
Facebook officials said they are “pleased” they were “able to serve as a constructive part of the judicial process.”
Now that his innocence has been demonstrated, Bradford has hired civil attorney Herbert L. Schmell, who said they are “99.9 percent sure” that they will be filing a civil suit against the city.
SOURCE: CNN
Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 5:17 pm by Lin McNulty
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