Google Geofence Data Exonerates Man After Being Charged With Murder (cbs46.com) 169
McGruber writes: Keith Sylvester, an Atlanta man wrongfully accused of killing his parents who were found dead in a burning home, is now a free man after Google geofence data identified another man as the murderer. "I had been telling them since 2018 that I was innocent," said Sylvester. "I was held in jail for almost 15 months and I wrote just about everybody and they finally released me in March."
"Officers accused Sylvester of strangling his parents and then setting their home on fire to get rid of evidence, but there was video evidence that he was not at the scene at the time of murders," reports CBS46 News Atlanta. "It's not just the video evidence from the convenient stores, it's also his cell phone GPS data that they had, it's also dash camera in his own car that recorded his location throughout the night. Putting all that evidence together it's impossible to reconcile him being there at a time when he could've started a fire," said Sylvester's attorney Zack Greenamyre.
"In a statement District Attorney Paul Howard said they dropped the charges after their Major Felonies Unit conducted their own independent investigation," the report says. "During the process they acquired a Google geofence search warrant which identified Cornelius Muckle as the culprit. The statement went on to say Muckle's cell phone was inside the house at the time of the crimes and he has now been charged with the murders. As for Sylvester, his attorney says that much of the information exonerating him was known at the time of his arrest. He says the officers ignored the evidence and should be held accountable."
"Officers accused Sylvester of strangling his parents and then setting their home on fire to get rid of evidence, but there was video evidence that he was not at the scene at the time of murders," reports CBS46 News Atlanta. "It's not just the video evidence from the convenient stores, it's also his cell phone GPS data that they had, it's also dash camera in his own car that recorded his location throughout the night. Putting all that evidence together it's impossible to reconcile him being there at a time when he could've started a fire," said Sylvester's attorney Zack Greenamyre.
"In a statement District Attorney Paul Howard said they dropped the charges after their Major Felonies Unit conducted their own independent investigation," the report says. "During the process they acquired a Google geofence search warrant which identified Cornelius Muckle as the culprit. The statement went on to say Muckle's cell phone was inside the house at the time of the crimes and he has now been charged with the murders. As for Sylvester, his attorney says that much of the information exonerating him was known at the time of his arrest. He says the officers ignored the evidence and should be held accountable."
Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Insightful)
... and the taxpayers will have to pay for these officers ineptitude.
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''officers ineptitude.''
As long as you are referring to officers of the court, IE admitted members of the bar. At first glance it appears that both defense and people's lawyers were fully inept. He was charged 15 months ago, we can assume he was arraigned, but no discovery since then? All this is part of the public record, too bad TFA didn't have any depth.
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A defense attorney can uncover vast amounts of exonerating evidence, and it could be ignored by the DA.
Even worse, if the person has been convicted and jailed by the time the evidence is found a DA will usually fight a prisoner's release tooth and nail, even in the presence of overwhelming evidence of the prisoners innocence.
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Given all of the evidence that showed he didn't do it, how the fuck was he charged in the first place?
Last I knew you needed evidence to charge someone. And you definitely needed evidence hold them in jail for 15 months. There are a slew of laws being broken here, and yeah, the dude should be in for a solidly good payday to make up for it. And if there was any justice in the world, a bunch of people should lose their jobs.
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''Last I knew you needed evidence to charge someone.''
You would think, right? A sworn affidavit by a officer of the law is sufficient to charge one of a crime. The defendant is arraigned and the DA presents the charge to the judge, the defendant enters a plea and a date for a prelim and bail is set. The prelim is where the DA must prove to the court that there is sufficient evidence to try the defendant [discovery is set between that..etc].
So the only evidence is necessary to charge someone is an officer's
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Given all of the evidence that showed he didn't do it, how the fuck was he charged in the first place?
You're totally correct. The way this sounds to me is until another suspect was found (by an independent investigation), they weren't going to let go.
Sort of a "well, the evidence says it wasn't you, but if not you, then who else? No? No answer? Okay, well, we'll stick with you for now." Basically, for lack of an answer they stuck with the least-unllikely suspect they had... which was still very unlikely.
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:4, Insightful)
Given all of the evidence that showed he didn't do it, how the fuck was he charged in the first place?
You're totally correct. The way this sounds to me is until another suspect was found (by an independent investigation), they weren't going to let go.
That's all too often how these things work. Get a conviction, and if it's the right person that's a bonus.
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Why do you think the defense attorneys get to drop the prosecution's charges?
15 months is about how long the prosecution can string along motions to dismiss.
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Given that this was Georgia, I didn't even need to look at the picture to know the color of his skin. By the time I read that he had been held for 15 months in Georgia despite strong evidence of innocence, I knew that he couldn't possibly not be African American.
When are we going to see these corrupt prosecutors do actual jail time for their crimes against humanity?
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What sort of compensation can he expect for false imprisonment?
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Malicious prosecution. Section 51-7-40 in Georgia Code.
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Interesting)
Having also been a victim of being wrongfully arrested and detained, I can tell you it will be almost impossible for him to sue for damages. It's not enough to prove the State was inept. You must prove it was willfully malicious otherwise sovereign immunity places the State beyond your reach. In other words, you can't sue them because they were negligent or inept. You have to prove they were out to get you specifically.
I was arrested two years ago, allegedly for violating a restraining order. The order in question had been dismissed due to perjury by the person requesting the warrant (short story: this person was trying to harm me and my children). I had the paperwork showing the order had been dismissed. I gave it to officers when they came to arrest me. They ignored it. My lawyer told the court during my hearing. They ignored it. Turns out the court had misfiled the dismissal, so their "system" showed it was valid when it was not. It took my lawyers 40 days to get the State to figure out what happened, during which time I was held in custody. I lost my job, insurance, almost lost my house and custody of my three children. It cost me almost $10,000 in legal fees to get this resolved. When I was ultimately released, there was no "gee, we're sorry we fucked up" from the judge. Just released, with no recourse, no job, massive debts, and a hole in my resume that will be difficult to explain forever.
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Is this because of the specifics of the case (fuck up being done by the neutral party that is the court rather than the legal opposition), or is this a general rule for all state actors in court of law in US?
Because that sounds rather odd for a country as notoriously litigious and hell bent of extracting ridiculous legal punishments and settlements as US.
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General rule for all state actors.
The US legal system is set up such that the powerful are more powerful in the legal system, while the weak are still weaker. You may have seen a few protesters around who are complaining about the legal system, how state actors can kill unarmed people and face no punishment.
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>powerful are more powerful in the legal system, while the weak are still weaker
That is the general rule for every living being on this planet and has nothing to do with state actors, courts, humans or even animals. It's a universal because of what organic life is about on this planet.
As such, I'm not really interested in such wide ranging rules. I'm interested in specifics.
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Generally state governments and their officials have sovereign immunity for otherwise legal exercise of their authority.
I mean the right thing to do would be to pass a law saying that detention resulting from the state's own errors (in this case, the misfiling of the restraining order dismissal) requires the state to make the improperly detained people whole for any monetary losses incurred as a result from an erroneous detention. You might even go further and make improper detention an affirmative defense
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I imagine that outcome of such actions would actually be the opposite from one you list as desirable. When you start punishing people for inevitable mistakes of others, pretty much anyone with a choice will look elsewhere for a job.
So quality of your DAs will go straight into the toilet, with many jobs simply becoming impossible to fill. And you'll quickly learn what security problems associated with not being able to pursue and imprison criminals look like in a very direct, Portland-like fashion. The end p
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Do they at least reimburse you for the expenses you incurred fighting the case?
I.e. not damages, but legal fees that were spent defending the now judge-admitted errors by the officers of the court?
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they at least reimburse you for the expenses you incurred fighting the case?
I.e. not damages, but legal fees that were spent defending the now judge-admitted errors by the officers of the court?
Nope. Not one red cent.
Keep in mind I would have likely spent much more time in custody if I hadn't had three very good lawyers fighting my case, constantly bombarding the prosecution and court to investigate why this order -- having clearly been dismissed -- was still shown as valid in their system. Their initial stance was "the system can't be wrong," resulting in the court upholding my incarceration pending trial despite us showing clear proof of the dismissal. We then had to depend on the court to investigate itself, something they were uninterested in doing. Ultimately, after several hearings -- each taking weeks to schedule -- the original dismissal was literally discovered sitting under a stack of papers on the desk of a court clerk, having never been entered into the system.
For me, I was "lucky" in that I had the financial means to hire lawyers to force the court to do its job. I was in jail with many others who only had public defenders. Public defenders either don't have the time or inclination to hammer on prosecutors or the court itself to get quicker results. Some of these men had languished in jail for almost a year merely waiting on hearings to be scheduled. The fact that you can be held for months or years and still be innocent is mind boggling. That such a thing can happen and you have no recourse is beyond comprehension.
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Yours sounds like a good example of things that should be improved on.
But to me, it's not really beyond comprehension in that most legal systems in the world are this way. They offer a singular citizen no recourse against mistakes of the system. This is the case even in much of Europe, and rest of the world is far worse in this regard, to the point where trying to fight the court carries severe penalties of its own. Most people forget that as bad as court systems tend to be in much of the Western nations, t
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Indeed. In general, trusting the system to "perform to high standard" without having a very high standard for hiring/firing practices is a recipe for disaster in any system with humans involved.
And I would be shocked if hiring/firing low level clerks is possible to hold to a high standard in US. I've seen enough of how public services in that country are ran to know this.
And people like you end up paying the price. You have my sympathy, for what little it is worth.
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It's a clear violation of the right to due process and a speedy trial.
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like District Attorney misbehaviour. One of the weakest links in US Justice system.
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So many ppl point to the LEOs, when in fact, it is the Prosecutors that are the REAL FUCK-UPS.
BLM should be focusing their rage and changes on removing QI on LEOS AND the courts, but also removing the statuettes of limitations ESP. ON PROSECUTORS.
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But why the fuck did the cops charge him? There seems to be no evidence that he did it in the first place. The exculpatory evidence was available to the cops with almost no effort.
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Are police officers actually ones who can charge people, or is it the District Attorney who does it on their behalf?
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:4, Informative)
Police don't charge people with crimes. Prosecutors do that.
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:2)
Cops round people up on slight suspicion. As long as they only hold you for three days, they pretty much don't need any reason to arrest you. That's their role. It's up to other people to decide whether to charge the suspect.
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like District Attorney misbehaviour.
This is so blatant. In case anyone doesn't see it, the story here is that the charges weren't dropped because of the overwhelming evidence casting doubt on the man's guilt, they were dropped because they found someone else to take this guy's place. Do they have a quota for number of people thrown in jail at any given week?
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Well that's what taxpayers get for hiring the cheapest police officers they could find. It was a gamble, a greedy attempt to save themselves money, and this time they lost.
If they keep losing, maybe next time they will hire better people and fire the bad ones [theguardian.com].
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Well that's what taxpayers get for hiring the cheapest police officers they could find. It was a gamble, a greedy attempt to save themselves money, and this time they lost.
The police have approximately nothing to do with this. All that is required for an arrest is reasonable suspicion. It was his parents' house, and he lived within the city. So if he said something or acted in some way that gave them any reason to be even slightly suspicious, that's enough to hold him for 72 hours. Or maybe they were just a bunch of racist idiots and arrested him because of the color of his skin. Who knows. Either way, the harm caused by their role in all of this was minimal, because th
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You're saying the police should ignore the evidence and just trust their gut [cc.com] when deciding whether to arrest.
I don't think I want to live in your police-state utopia.
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No, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that the threshold for reasonable cause to hold someone is a lot lower than the threshold for actually prosecuting that person, and that I cannot, without actually having been there, say with certainty that the police didn't have adequate cause to hold him as a suspect, given the information available at the moment of his arrest.
Also, there are other reasons to hold the person beyond suspicion of committing the actual crime, such as concern that the perso
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Yeah, but it's largely an unintended consequence of desiring low taxes. I'd imagine that uniformly doubling the total police budgets for higher salaries would go over like a lead balloon with nearly all of the electorate. The right would object to tax increases and the left would object to spending more on police. Sane people would realize that while low entry level salaries are a problem, the total allocation of salaries is a mess and that the likely outcome would be just be high seniority officers gett
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You seem quick to dismiss the city council's role in giving the police union a reason to exist.
Re:Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Insightful)
While legally we are suppose to be innocent until proven guilty.The reality of 21st century justice is you are guilty and if you weren't then you are still a problem because someone thought it could be you.
Being charged with a crime, is often enough to damage your reputation, it puts the arrest on your background check lookup. For anyone willing to hire the person they see the charge, will always have a sense of doubt about hiring that person.
You have 2 candidates, one was charged with murder while proven not-guilty. or one without being charged for murder who are you going to pick?
It is a messed up system, with racist overtones. As the police can arrest and charge anyone they don't want to be there, only to have them not-guilty (No skin off their backs) however with that charge on the books. Their lives are now unjustly ruined.
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Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:2)
Courts, cops, doesn't matter, taxpayers still end up being on the hook for the incompetence.
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Justice denied for 1 is Justice denied for all.
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The cops are often in charge of presenting the evidence.
Recently listened to a podcast about some poor guy in Halifax who spent 22 years in prison after getting convicted of the murder of his girl friend. Not only was there little evidence that he did it but the cops actively destroyed evidence that would have exonerated him. Things like the fact a serial killer lived next door to the girl friend and moved away right after the murder along with witness statements pointing to the serial killer. Some of the e
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Deliberately destroying or ignoring evidence that would exculpate someone should be a capital crime. High treason, with capital punishment.
Oh, no? Well the robocops are eager to be judge, jury, and executioner...hold them to the same standard.
Don't like it? Don't be a corrupt shithead. I mean, you don't have anything to hide, do you?
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The problem in this case was/is proving who spent hours deleting database entries, one by one, starting with proving they were deleted. It's not like the cops are eager to do the investigation. No capital punishment here, so life in prison, ideally in the general population.
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This is why I continue to say that BLM is a disaster. They are fighting cops, and ignoring the prosecution.
They're fighting the cops because the cops are the ones killing them.
Yes, prosecutors are often bad too. But they're not the ones suffocating people.
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They're fighting the cops because the cops are the ones killing them.
Most of the killings that we see today, happen on spur of the moment, and many of them are NOT what they appear.
For example, according to Forensics, George Floyd did NOT die from asphyxiation. He died from drugs.
It remains to be seen about DC's recent death. It is unknown if it was the drugs he was on, or the police. BUT, the spit bag allows pretty free air movement, so I doubt it was cops.
OTOH, how many blacks are on death row? How many blacks get reprieves from death row? Few.
Far more INNOCENT
Sovereign immunity = "cannot be trusted" (Score:2)
... and the taxpayers will have to pay for these officers ineptitude.
As someone else already commented [slashdot.org] here, officers have "sovereign immunity", which means they're basically not accountable for their own fuck-ups (except where malicious, which is a high bar to prove - hmmm wonder if their union had a hand in defining that).
Basically, "sovereign immunity" is synonymous to "cannot be trusted", because anything they do can go without repercussions.
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While I would like to agree with you, I feel that people won't exercise their legal rights to take the police and hold them accountable. They just take some money and the law never changed to the benefit of all.
I dislike that I'm thinking that way, I would like to see some positive action one day.
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Interesting)
In fairness to the officers, the guy is black so it's understandable they wouldn't believe him. Just wait until he goes to cash his check [newsweek.com].
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:2)
From the Javashit article that turns your screen into a disco inferno:
"The manager told him the bank's verification system was not working, so she would need to "call in the checks" to verify them, the complaint said. Instead, she called police to the scene and reported that Thomas was attempting to deposit fraudulent checks"
That's a good indication that you are about to be fucked.
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:5, Interesting)
How is it racist to point out the existence of racism, or its well-documented prevalence within police departments? For crying out loud even the FBI has been warning that the KKK has been actively infiltrating the police force for many, many years.
There's always the possibility that this time it was just bad luck, but it'd be bad luck that fell in line with established trends, so that's really not the way to bet. Especially not in the face of a mountain of evidence that should have exonerated him.
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For crying out loud even the FBI has been warning that the KKK has been actively infiltrating the police force for many, many years.
The KKK has been infiltrating government - police forces, judges, legislators - for ALL OF ITS EXISTENCE. It STARTED OUT as a resistance organization to post civil war reconstruction, founded and operated by such people. It WAS the 1% of much of the US for a century - not just in the south, but all over. It was beaten back and marginalized during the Civil Rights Era, but n
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I'm not sure if this should be modded +1 "well played, good use of sarcasm" or -1 "ignorant racist troll."
Emphasis mine, and that is fucking terrifying. Are people that unable to derive meaning from words?
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Are people that unable to derive meaning from words?
Slashdot is a site for nerds. Many of us are Aspies. We have difficulty detecting sarcasm.
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:2)
Who wants to bet that these Keystone Kops will get fired or ranked down?
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on that either.
Georgia has complicated rules for government liabi (Score:2)
Georgia has complicated rules for state liability and liability of cities ans counties.
The principle of sovereign immunity (you can't make the government punish itself) says that you can't sue *unless state law or other state actions permit the suit*.
Here, I would expect the person will sue. Their lawyer will need to look carefully at the waivers of liability in the Georgia Tort Claims Act and elsewhere. It does appear to be an uphill battle in Georgia, as immunity is not waived for false imprisonment spec
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I'm sorry you had to deal with whatever you had to deal with.
Georgia has a speedy trial law at O.C.G.A. Â 17-7-170.
A defendant can demand to be tried within court term (within a few months) and if they are not tried within that time "the defendant shall be absolutely discharged and acquitted of the offense".
I don't know the specifics of your case, so I can't comment on that. Your description seems to indicate that you were arrested for violating a restraining order, the restraining order was later lif
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Georgia law might not, but the sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution preempts it. T
Re: Sounds like he's soon to be a rich man (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t see how stealing more than a year from an innocent manâ(TM)s life while you try to frame him and railroad him into prison for a crime he didnâ(TM)t commit is anything BUT malicious.
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The immunity of the government is upheld by the barrel of a gun. What do you propose?
Note to self (Score:5, Funny)
Even better, steal the phone of your nemesis and carry that around instead.
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This is modded funny, but actually I wonder when that will happen; as stories like this become more common in the news, how long before criminals do remember to leave their phone home or someone does attempt to frame someone via these means?
If the criminals in question had half a brain, they wouldn't be out committing crimes with a tracking device on them. That it would take years of news articles pointing out how bad of an idea that is for them, just proves that they do not have much understanding of how things work.
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as stories like this become more common in the news, how long before criminals do remember to leave their phone home or someone does attempt to frame someone [by stealing his phone and carrying it while committing a crime]?
What makes you think it hasn't happened already?
Geofencing (Score:5, Funny)
Clicked URL.
Got this:
451: Unavailable
The page you are attempting to access is not available in your country.
If that's not a great example of geofencing, I don't know what is.
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You clicked to read the article? I'm not sure you know how to do /. correctly... ;)
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I'm a slow learner...
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Clicked URL.
Got this:
451: Unavailable
The page you are attempting to access is not available in your country.
If that's not a great example of geofencing, I don't know what is.
I just hope Google's data that resulted in the incarceration of a person isn't easily fooled by a VPN.
Which house was Cornelius Muckle in? (Score:5, Funny)
Cornelius Muckle sounds like a Hufflepuff who works in the Ministry of Magic.
Easier ways to murder your parents... (Score:2)
His civil rights action (Score:3)
This was filed in Sept, 2019.
https://dockets.justia.com/doc... [justia.com]
Interesting read.
Compensation to be determined (Score:2)
And rightly so; and the parties that screwed up should be punished
Question is: How is this different from Reparations for the descendants of slaves?
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Think of if he has children and had been convicted. Would the children have suffered?
Travesty of Justice (Score:2, Informative)
""Officers accused Sylvester of strangling his parents and then setting their home on fire to get rid of evidence, but there was video evidence that he was not at the scene at the time of murders," reports CBS46 News Atlanta. "It's not just the video evidence from the convenient stores, it's also his cell phone GPS data that they had, it's also dash camera in his own car that recorded his location throughout the night. Putting all that evidence together it's impossible to reconcile him being there at a time
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It was only the Google geofence data that implicated someone else.
Cops had someone in custody. They didn't want to mess up their report card until they had another body to replace him with.
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It's understandable from an economic/game
Justice Delayed (Score:2)
15 months is unconscionable given that this data was available. It sounds like he was arrested with zero evidence?
If you have power and somebody gets in your way, you can have them locked up for a LONG time on BS charges.
This will be among the enumerated claims in the next Declaration. It doesn't have to be this way. Tyranny is Over (if you want it).
Don't talk to the police (Score:2)
On the other hand, this reinforces the inviolable fact that anyone remotely capable of being suspected of a crime needs to avoid feeding the prosecuting machine with material that can be misconstrued (either honestly or dishonestly) against themselves. I am a generally pro-cop, pro law and order person, however hav
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Trust us. We're the Police! (Score:2)
"As for Sylvester, his attorney says that much of the information exonerating him was known at the time of his arrest. He says the officers ignored the evidence and should be held accountable."
The Google Geofence Data (Score:2)
was charged with murder? I guess we've given up on antitrust then.
Easy come, easy go.... (Score:2)
Intertect (Score:2)
Anyone remember the first season of Mannix on TV? (yes I am that old!)
Larry and Sergei should create a new company named Intertect. They already have the computers; they already know everything about everyone. They would only need to hire, train and equip a bunch of good looking operatives and presto! no unresolved crimes.
Mannix Opening Title Credits :: Season One (1967) [youtube.com]
So there's NO gain from loss of privacy (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, the guy was released when they hung somebody else on the geo-fencing hook. But ALL of the evidence in his favour, including dashcam footage, convenience store security footage, and his own cell phone's GPS data, weren't enough to keep him out of jail in the first place.
The takeaway from this is that if the cops 'like' you for a crime, all of the contrary evidence from all of the privacy-raping technology in the world isn't enough to keep you out of jail. If that's true even in the States, (a nominally free country that's nominally under the rule of law), where does that leave the rest of the world?
I'm starting to think the whole 'de-fund the police' idea is a good one - not to eliminate the police, but to make make them servants of the law instead of being a law unto themselves as it seems they currently are.
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Not in America. But in most of the rest of the western world the guy wouldn't have been in jail with this loss of privacy as few other places have a desperate need to feed meat into the front end of the PIC machine.
PR Stunt (Score:2)
The DA's statement is basically an advertisement for geofence searches when in fact the whole miscarriage of justice thing could have been resolved by just looking at the evidence.
Need to have those numbers look nice (Score:2)
As much as it is good to see Google saving an innocent life, it also demonstrates the problem with the system. The ever present need to put "someone" in jail when there is a crime involved is harmful. It does not matter whether there is enough evidence, or that person was actually guilty.
The investigation cannot say "oops, we could not find anyone", so they put this poor fella thru the terrible ordeal. Not only he lost his parents, he lost more than a year of his life, and probably lost his job, other thing
Police officer lack of technical understanding (Score:5, Informative)
don't hold your breath (Score:2)
... officers ignored the evidence ...
sounds like par for the course. I know of far too many cases where the police and prosecutors ignored, suppressed, and concealed evidence that proved the defendant was innocent even before the charges were filed. But they pressed ahead with it because they just wanted the convictions on their resumes.
...and should be held accountable.
Yeah, not going to happen.
Case in point, the DA in Bakersfield got re-elected at least 3 more times after he put 36 Innocent people in jail 34 got released after their appeals proved had been railroaded a
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This is why we need to focus on courts, not so much the police. And it requires not only removing QI, but also statutes of Limitations.
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I think you are making my point. Without this privacy-invading data set from Google, the prosecutors would have gotten away with convicting an innocent man!
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''QI should go away'' sorry I don't understand what that means.
Qualified Immunity [wikipedia.org]
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Ah. Thanks for that. Even as someone familiar with the term, I didn't make the connection, and instead assumed QI was some pseudonymous leader of BLM or civil rights group that I had never heard of, and I was struggling to figure out what sort of non-native speaker linguistic quirk would result in saying "go away on" instead of "whale on".
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People in positions of power
That's why we entrust certain kinds of data to elected officials rather than the power that economic might conveys. The power to access financial data for the purpose of collecting taxes or the knowledge of which car is registered to whom carries with it a fiduciary responsibility. Which we (theoretically) can withdraw. Good luck clawing that back from Google.
The concern is that the same sort of data could be used to track potential "troublemakers",
This is only a problem if you have lazy cops. Who won't take the extra effort to sort through anything more than location data to find out who was act
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Aren't we talking about America, where you have to be rich to get elected and even Judges, District Attorneys and even Police Chiefs are elected?
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Can we all just stop pretending America is a civilized country?
When did anyone even start doing that?
What do you think "civilization" IS? (Score:2)
Can we all just stop pretending America is a civilized country?
What do you think "civilization" IS?
You talk as if it was supposed to be a GOOD thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Often it is, "Wait, the evidence points to our informer? Who else can we pin this on?"