On Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 11:49am, 19 year old Rodney Bradford updated his Facebook status from his father's apartment in Harlem to say: "Where's my pancakes?"In a recent court case, those three words were accepted by the judge as an alibi and got Rodney off of alleged armed robbery charges that took place moments later.
This is a unique first and, from my perspective, a very dangerous precendent.
After being arrested for alleged participation in a mugging at gun-point that took place around the sane time, Bradford's lawyer, Robert Reuland used the Facebook status (along with testimony from Bradford's father) as an alibi proving that Bradford was, in fact, in the apartment at the time of the robbery.
Facebook provided evidence (using IP tracking) that the posting did, in fact come from the apartment at that time.
With Social Media playing an increasing role in our lives, I expect we will be seeing more of this in future legal cases. On one hand, I'm glad to see Bradford's name cleared. On the other, this creates a scary precedence.
Anyone can update your status if they have a username and password. What is stopping someone from now planning to commit a crime and having a friend login to their account from their home right before the crime is committed and type in a status update?
Social media sites have been used in court cases before. They have been used to demonstrate infidelity in divorce cases or to check in on sick employees.
Social media brings a lot of good into our lives, but the Bradford case just proved that technology can also add a whole other layer of complexity to our lives. I look forward to reading about future cases where Facebook and other social media sites play an active part in court cases.
You can read the full article on the Bradford case by clicking here.
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