Accused Mugger Exonerated by Facebook Alibi

When 19-year-old Rodney Bradford was arrested for a mugging at gunpoint in Brooklyn, he claimed that he was innocent – that he couldn’t have committed the crime, because at 11:50 a.m. when the robbery occurred he was at his father’s home in Harlem. Whereas the statements of his family may not have been as convincing, there was one witness to his alibi that the prosecutors found compelling: Facebook.

Bradford posted a status update on the social networking site at 11:49 a.m. When his lawyer brought this to the district attorney’s attention, Facebook was subpoenaed to verify that the update had indeed been sent from Harlem. Thus, what otherwise would have been just one of a number of seemingly unimportant updates became something critical – an alibi.

Though social networking activity has been included as evidence in criminal cases (for example, the burglar who logged onto Facebook on his victim’s computer), lawyers say that this seems to be the first instance of a Facebook message serving as an alibi. However, with use of the site becoming increasingly prevalent, this sort of legal issue use may be more common in the future.

It is of course conceivable that an Internet user could falsify whereabouts using a social networking site. The simplest way would be to give someone else one’s username and password to post an update from elsewhere. Whereas investigators can verify where an update comes from, verifying who was actually at the computer is a much more difficult problem.

So how much should law enforcement and prosecutors be weighing this type of evidence? With a society of increasingly sophisticated Internet users, technology is showing up more and more in the courtroom – but this means that it could possibly be misused as well.