So how did Bradford walk free? Facebook. On the day of the crime, which took place around 11:50 a.m., his status on Facebook was updated at 11:49 a.m.: "on the phone with this fat chick...wherer my i hop." He had been talking with his girlfriend and referenced a recent visit to the restaurant chain IHOP. A Brooklyn district attorney subpoenaed Facebook and, with the pulled records, Reuland was able to convince her that Bradford's Facebook update had been posted within a minute of "the time the crime was alleged to have happened, from an IP address registered to [Bradford's] father in Manhattan."
"What we had in hand was irrefutable proof," says Reuland. "And that's really where it turned the trick." Bradford's Facebook alibi "made the day," he says.
While Facebook may have saved Bradford, the article also points out how it's nailing others:
Facebook profiles have helped nab all kinds of people, from unfaithful spouses in divorce settlements to cheaters in insurance-fraud cases. As Browning noted this month at a conference sponsored by the Texas Center for the Judiciary, our online lives are "virtual treasure troves of information" for lawyers and judges.
"Whenever we're on the Internet, we leave behind this very revealing and gigantic trail of information," says Nicholas Bramble, a Yale Law School fellow who has studied digital evidence. And that trail — which can include anything from a post on a Facebook profile to a message to a MySpace contact to an appearance in the background of a stranger's photo — can be a "huge resource" in judicial proceedings, he says.
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