[UPDATED] Rodney Bradford is probably the first person in the world who can say that he owes his freedom to Facebook.
Police had charged the 19-year-old with being involved in a robbery. Bradford, however, had been at home in his parents’ house in Brooklyn and his attorney was able to prove it through the young man’s Facebook account. He was being held awaiting trial.
Bradford entered a cryptic status update, “Where’s my pancakes” at the same time as the gun-point mugging was taking place. Facebook was subpoenaed for evidence and provided the IP address of the computer, which was located on Nassau Street, Brooklyn, New York, where his parents’ home was located.
UPDATE: Bradford’s status update did not read: “Where’s my pancakes” as was widely reported, it was actually the more offensive, “ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK……WHERER MY I HOP.”
Perhaps, that is what prompted his defense attorney Robert Reuland to have discounted the possibility that he could have had someone else log-in to his Facebook account from his parents’ house and update his status for him with the following rebuttal:
This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil.
What puzzles this writer is not that Bradford was freed by the fact that he made a Facebook status update from his parents’ home, but that he could be charged with a serious crime with which he clearly could not have been involved.
[CNET]
Brilliant.