Murder Suspect Has Witness: A MetroCard (2008)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The justice system doesn't seek justice, it seeks someone to blame so the statistics look good. How is it not a crime to waste taxpayer money on the wrong person when a detective's willful negligence leads to someone being illegally imprisoned? Taxpayers get to pay even more to rehabilitate the illegally imprisoned since they lose their jobs, and the real killer is meanwhile on the loose. If there was justice, the detective and prosecutors would be facing charges for wasting taxpayer money and wrongfully imprisoning someone, and be fired.
But if you want justice, punishment probably isn't going to get you there..
Instead try looking to other countries, many places judges and prosecutors aren't elected or politically appointed. The police is tasked with doing an independent investigation. That's a good start.
0. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/after-metrocar...
This wouldn't be noteworthy if New York City didn't masquarade itself as the center of the free world. But this only matters from Wall St to West 118th st.
Would be 79th st, if Columbia University wasn't up there.
Most of the runners hate it, there are not many trees, not many people come out to cheer runners on.
There is not a single bookshop in the Bronx.
The other side has way more trees.
I've often wondered if this is part of the reason cases seem to be dropped if the primary suspect is exonerated. I can picture a lawyer saying "Well they took all the evidence and tried to pin it on that guy and it turned out wrong, how can they turn around and say it was my client now?" Or maybe my perception is just wrong, I don't tend to follow such things.
Police can only keep their personal sense of self-worth, justice and fairness by… arrogantly sticking to their guns and forcing a conviction onto whoever they initially fingered as being guilty.
Like when you have Jason Jones in custody and he's be in trouble for 6 other things and "he probably killed this guy". That's when the generally good people tend to, maybe, cut corners a bit.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/11/19/nyregion/18metroc...
The case was founded on claims by a witness:
The witness, who has not been identified, said
Corey Jones was arguing with the man and accused
him of being a “snitch.” A short time later, the
witness said, Corey handed Jason a gun, and Jason
fired shots, killing the man. A call to 911 was
made at 12:21 a.m., records show.
None of those data points is really an hour from the other, as the crow flies. These a bike ride-able distances, within the time stamps given.
Not knowing any of the names involved, or having a substantial axe to grind, I can just look at those point on the map and say that it would be trivial to hand someone a metrocard and have them swipe it somewhere else, to construct an alibi, and then get it back to me after I'm done with a premeditated crime.
The MTA didn't show a video frame capture of any specific person in a particular place.
The check-cashing branch had the video still. But look at the time stamps. There was nearly a solid hour to displace, and have someone else fabricate the metrocard swipe. You know, maybe the kind of favor a girlfriend might carry out?
Really, there's only one crucial detail that forges the integrity of the evidence: The accused did not warily supply his own evidence. Someone else fished it out and asked questions.
The only thing that really lends credence to the extra facts is that the individual might not have opted to seal the alibi air tight of his own volition. The detail might have sat there unused, but for external, and (most-likely) objective advocacy. The trustworthy face of the former detective offering assistance.
But really, those metrocard swipes have all the integrity of a wi-fi IP address. Theoretically, a motivated individual could make a metrocard that contradicts real events.
It's really not more substantial than a thermal paper receipt.
Perhaps interesting on it's own. But only if incidental and used to support stronger facts.
That's not really how any of this works. It's not the defense that has to "support stronger facts", that's the prosecution's job. The existence of the metrocard evidence pushes the prosecution's burden correspondingly higher.
Now, here's a few ways this could've played out:
Scenario A is that a random guy with a couple of drug priors is actually trying to keep his life together, leaves work, goes from work to a place to cash out his pay check, goes hanging out with his girlfriend. He somehow ends up wrongfully accused, possibly because of his priors.
Scenario B is that the guy was walking around town, randomly ran into the victim (while presumably having been snitched on by said victim), and, after a verbal confrontation, murders the presumptive snitch.
Scenario C is that the brothers had just heard the guy snitched on them, they're fuming, and, as a spur of the moment thing, go on the prowl for the snitch, and kill him.
Given the existence of the Metrocard evidence, B and C are off the table. Instead, you have scenario D:
Random guy with a couple of drug priors but no prior history of violent crime plans and executes a homicide, devises a sophisticated alibi that has him at reasonable locations at reasonable times while biking to the crime scene and back. This perp was sophisticated enough that there is no evidence pointing at him other than eyewitness testimony, yet he was still sloppy enough to confront the victim in public.
Scenarios B and C were fairly run of the mill situations, and eyewitness testimony might've been enough to clinch it, but D is the "this shit only happens on TV" type of crazy, and requires a correspondingly high amount of supporting evidence. This leaves us with A being the overwhelmingly likely alternative.
How is it, that the guns land right in the hands of the people willing to use them? How are those guns floating around, carefully concealed, from purchase to grudge match? How does the grudge match start? Who snitches about what at all?
Clearly someone got shot, and no one knows who did it. No one knows anything? No one knows what happened. Based on that line of reasoning, maybe it's safe to conclude that no one got shot at all.
Except someone did get shot. And whoever did it managed to sail right through all of the gaps you've outlined, and disappear. How did that happen? Who would be motivated to operate against someone disrespecting them in a convenience store argument?
Why taunt anybody in a convenience store? Much less about authenticity or being a tattle tale.
Would you shoot someone for getting snarky with you? A random person at a deli?
If you were the kind of person who roamed the streets with a gun, you'd have your eyes in front of you about getting picked up with it. Even getting caught with a gun inside NYC city limits is a serious thing.
So to carry one around, to know where it is represents a degree of premeditation. Were the victim and the assailant just strangers? The assailant was so chaotic that this is a senseless crime against a stranger during some seconds-long encounter, and yet all so careful, that no one can figure out who dunnit, no one knows how the gun showed up, or why the sudden outburst?
Platonic ideals are great, but hang around some of these delis some time. See what it's like to mingle.
We don't know the witness or even the victim, by way of this article. Who were they?
Without evidence, this idea is just as valid as the theory you propose.
Because the evidence of a MetroCard and photograph are "flimsy"?
Our Justice system is designed to see to justice, it's not there to make sure every single criminal is punished.
Now, I'm inclined to believe this guy didn't do that, because he probably would have pushed a lot harder on it if this was his pre-planned alibi, but I was hoping for a story of complete vindication because of this kind of evidence - maybe more like the guy who was acquitted of murder because he was filmed in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.