I’m Innocent. Just Check My Status on Facebook.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, published 11 November, 2009
The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. 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 words had been typed from a computer at an apartment at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, the home of Mr. Bradford’s father. 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 G. Browning, a lawyer in Dallas 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 revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpaceand Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.
Up to now, social networking activity has mostly been used as prosecutorial evidence, Mr. Browning said. He cited a burglary case in September in Martinsburg, Pa., in which the burglar used the victim’s computer to log on to Facebook and forgot to log off. The police followed the digital trail to Jonathan G. Parker, 19, 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. Browning said, contributing to his conviction and a sentence of life in prison without parole.
In civil cases, too, online communications have helped strengthen evidence, especially indivorce cases, where they are often used as proof of cheating.
And postings by a probationary sheriff’s deputy, Brian Quinn, 26, of Marion County, Fla., on his MySpace page led to his firing in June 2006 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.”
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.
With the use of a Facebook update as an alibi, such communications may also be used to prove innocence, Mr. Browning said.
Mr. Bradford’s arrest was for the mugging at gunpoint of Jeremy Dunklebarger and Rolando Perez-Lorenzo at 11:50 a.m. on Oct. 17, according to Mr. Reuland, Mr. Bradford’s lawyer.
Mr. Bradford, who was facing charges in a previous robbery, contended he was in Harlem at the time of the Oct. 17 robbery — a claim supported by Mr. Bradford’s father, Rodney Bradford Sr., and his stepmother, Ernestine Bradford, Mr. Reuland said.
Mr. Reuland acknowledged that, in principle, anyone who knew Mr. Bradford’s user name and password could have typed the Facebook update, but he regards it as unlikely.
“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 “icing on the cake,” since his client had other witnesses who provided an alibi.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said he could not discuss details of the case because it was sealed. But he acknowledged that Facebook was crucial to the charges’ being dropped.
But Joseph A. Pollini, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said prosecutors should not have been so quick to drop the charges.
“With a user name and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page,” Mr. Pollini 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.”
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Man Is Acquitted in Fake Dynamite Case
THE NEW YORK TIMES - City Room, published 21 October, 2009
A judge on Wednesday acquitted a Brooklyn maintenance worker who was arrested in 2007 for carrying a bundle of fake dynamite he found in the trash.
Ending a bench trial, the judge, Acting Justice Vincent M. Del Giudice of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, scoffed at prosecutors’ argument that the worker, Robert Lopez, intentionally caused a scare when he sat on his stoop with the theatrical prop.
“Would you prosecute all the people who sit on their porch with a lighter that looks like a grenade?” Justice Del Giudice asked one of the prosecutors, Brandon Story.
The saga unfolded on July 22, 2007, when Mr. Lopez was taking out the garbage at Cadman Towers, an apartment complex on Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. He said he found what was a clearly bogus bundle of dynamite.
Mr. Lopez took the prop with him, with plans to turn it into a piggy bank, figuring the hollow sticks were perfect for piling quarters. He was on his way home when two transit workers spotted the fake bomb and called the police.
As Mr. Lopez sat on the stoop of his apartment building, at 46 St. Felix Street, catching his breath on the hot summer day, the police descended on him.
Mr. Lopez, 40, was indicted on charges of violating a state law that makes “placing a false bomb or hazardous substance” a felony that carries up to four years in prison.
Mr. Story and a fellow prosecutor, Christopher Eribo, argued that Mr. Lopez caused public alarm by carrying the device from his job to his home and by “placing” it on his stoop.
Joshua Horowitz, Mr. Lopez’s lawyer, insisted his client was a victim of overzealous prosecution.
“My client was just resting on the porch of his own house where he had been living for four years, would he ever wanted to hurt his neighbors?” he said.
Shortly before the judge’s verdict, which came after months of postponed hearing, Mr. Horowitz had advised Mr. Lopez to consider taking a plea deal that would have given him three years’ probation.
“Why should I plead guilty if I haven’t done anything?” Mr. Lopez said before entering the courtroom.
Mr. Lopez, who has no job, said he was soon going to be homeless because he had no money for rent. But he said he was more worried for his mother, who he said received a diagnosis of cancer last week.
“My mom is going to be happy, my sister is going to be happy, all my family is going to be happy,” Mr. Lopez said. “And the bond guy is going to clap his hands — every time I see him he asks me why I’m still going there.”
Mr. Horowitz said coming out of the court, “I feel on top of the world. It’s like winning the World Series.”
Mr. Lopez looked at him and smiled.
“Remember my promise?” Mr. Lopez asked his attorney. “Now I have to take you to a steak restaurant.”
Mr. Horowitz did not decline the offer.
Trashy Treasure Leads to Felony False-Bomb Charge
THE NEW YORK TIMES, published 20 May, 2009
Robert’s Version from Damiano Beltrami on Vimeo.
As Robert Lopez tells it, his trouble began nearly two years ago when he plucked a bundle of fake dynamite from the trash in Brooklyn and took it home with plans to turn it into a piggy bank.
Now Mr. Lopez, 38, a career maintenance man with no criminal record beyond a 10-year-old marijuana possession violation, is set to appear in court on Thursday on false-bomb charges that could put him in prison for up to four years.
A Church Finds Its Radio Voice Again
THE LOCAL (NYT blog), published 9 April, 2009
Small girls in pink prom dresses held their breath. Young choir members cleared their throats quietly. Senior congregants like Lillian Ede drifted back to the times when gang members would sit in the back pews, craning their necks to see the pretty girls.
Then Bishop Carl Williams Jr. took the microphone, and the Institutional Church of God in Christ was back on the air after an absence of more than 30 years.
The March 26 evening service, broadcast two days later on WSNR radio, 620 AM, marked a milestone for the church at 170 Adelphi Street — and an acknowledgment of the transformation of the neighborhood, said Mr. Williams, whose father founded the church in 1951.
The church, home to the renowned, Grammy-nominated Institutional Church of God in Christ Radio Choir, had ended its 25-year radio run in the late 1970s, in part because, Mr. Williams said, “It was too dangerous.”
Parishioners used to pack the church for the broadcast service, which taped at 10:30 p.m. on Sundays (Mr. Williams’s father, Carl Williams Sr., picked such a late time slot to take advantage of the fact that all the other churches around were done for the day).
But the area was so crime-ridden that congregants’ cars often were vandalized, the younger Mr. Williams said.
“The church was between the projects; it was located in the area between the street gangs,” he recalled. “One was from the Fulton Street side, the other from Myrtle Avenue. One gang was called the Bishops, the other the Chaplains.”
The gangs would converge on the church, between Myrtle and Willoughby. Gang members came to flirt with female congregants but often ended up threatening parishioners and starting fights, Mr. Williams said.
“The neighborhood was in a bad shape,” Mr. Williams said, shaking his head. “Once a gospel choir from California came to visit, and as they were singing someone broke into their van and stole a lot of their sound equipment.”
The high cost of radio time was also a problem. “It turned out to be almost $800 a week,” the Bishop said. “It wasn’t profitable.”
This year, the church was able to get a much cheaper time slot on WSNR, based in Jersey City. “We pay $250 a week,” Mr. Williams said. “And we reach all of Brooklyn, New Jersey, Long Island, Queens and all the Bronx.”
The service, which tapes on Thursday nights at 8 and is broadcast Saturdays at 8:30 a.m., draws both longtime members, who now live as far away as Pennsylvania, and people from the ever-changing neighborhood.
Mr. Williams said he doesn’t see gang members amid a congregation where doctors, police officers and Wall Streeters worship side by side.
“The area is much quieter now,” he said (so quiet that the choir itself now draws noise complaints). “A lot of Wall Street yuppies have bought homes in this area, instead of spending all the time traveling out to the Island.”