Did Google Earth error send murderer to wrong address? | Hacker News Reader

Did Google Earth error send murderer to wrong address?

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45 pointsantimora25 comments

Hang on a moment, there's something about this use case that I don't really get.

Is it ever possible to send a murderer to the right address? I mean, shouldn't we be throwing a UserIsAMurderer exception and take some other kind of action?

Is it ever possible to send a murderer to the right address?

Lesser of two evils, in some cases the intended victim might have done something to the murderer, whereas a total stranger no.

Moral of the story is that maps and addresses are a ever changing thing, dbl check before running off with your AR15 or AK ;)

The intended victim might be being killed in order to suppress the truth about even greater crimes, in which case the lesser of two evils might be for a random person to be killed.

Terrible and tragic? Yes, absolutely. However, blaming Google Earth for this is ridiculous. It reminds me of the scene from Steve Martin's classic movie, The Jerk, where his character, Navin, is picked at random out of the phone book as a target for murder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcwz8-EfFYE

You're right, it is ridiculous. They'd have made a headline for it either way - the alternative would have been "MURDERER FINDS VICTIM USING GOOGLE EARTH".

I don't know about terrible and tragic. The murder was terrible and tragic, no doubt, but not the error. If it really did happen this way, then if Google Earth had given the killer the correct location, people still would have died.

I don't think they're 'blaming' google Earth; it's just a possible explanation for what otherwise appears to be a senseless murder. It's a fact that houses depicted on street view don't always line up with the correct address; anyone in the market for a house who uses Google Earth is familiar with this.

I don't see where you get the idea that the article was blaming Google Earth. The fact that Google Earth sends you to the wrong address is presented as an interesting bit of evidence that might exculpate the son.

"He hates these cans. Stay away from the cans."

At least it wasn't Apple Maps.

Pretty thin. I don't think the jury convicted the son on the absence of this theory, and this article really doesn't get into what evidence of guilt there actually was.

Article speculates on alternate crime theory without describing most of the evidence that was used to convict him. Seems like this applies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines

What baffles me is how did the jury convict the son without any DNA evidence? It looks like they came to a conclusion based on circumstantial evidence and his character. Is that how our legal system works? I wonder how many innocent people are out there serving sever prison terms.

Lots of people are convicted based on circumstantial evidence. DNA evidence always turns up in movies and TV shows, but in the real world it's seldom available. For example, if you shoot someone from fifty feet away, none of his DNA will get on you, or vice versa. If you wear gloves, none of your DNA will get on the gun (assuming that the gun is ever found).

What's even worse is that lots of people have been convicted of serious crimes even though DNA evidence existed that could have proved them innocent (by proving someone else committed the crime). There's even an organization called The Innocence Project[1] that's devoted to exonerating wrongly convicted people. But even the handful of people who are lucky enough to be exonerated sometimes spend decades in jail before their convictions are overturned, and some people have been proven innocent after having been executed. And the worst thing is that some courts will refuse to reopen cases even when convincing evidence of innocence has been produced; they'd rather let innocent people rot in jail than suffer the embarrassment of having made a serious error.

Also, the story says the defendant was "broke", which means that he was probably represented by an overworked public defender rather than a hot-shot lawyer.

[1] http://www.innocenceproject.org

It's unbelievable to me that they could give someone 2 consecutive life sentences unless the evidence is a lot more incriminating than the article mentioned. I hope he's guilty, as it looks like he's going to be behind bars for life, but if he happens to be innocent I can't imagine how terrible his life is right now.

No. A hired hit doesn't stick around to dig through only the dresser drawers while leaving wallets, [rare and collectible] coins, and other valuables (jewelry) laying out in plain sight alone. Not to mention who starts at the bottom draw and works their way up?

If you start on the bottom drawer you don't have to close them to access the next drawer

1. I would bet one is more likely to find valuables in the top drawers, but I could be wrong.

2. Some dressers will tip over if all the drawers are pulled out at once and are loaded with enough things.

3. The contents of the drawers were largely untouched/gone through. If one was in such haste they would probably throw the clothes all over the floor.

Yeah, if you like having a dresser fall on you.

It is conspicuous that the article says the Google Earth data is wrong, but never mentions Google Maps, which is much more likely to have been used.

Just got done watching this on TV. I know it's possible... but would a hitman really use a .22 rifle? The son most likely did it. He spent over 700k of his dads money day trading.. he wrote a note that said "fixed ya" to throw off suspicions of his son.

I could be wrong, but I believe 22 rifles are used by hitmen because the bullets don't have enough power to pass through the victim to leave exit wounds. Exit wounds tell a lot about a murder.

Also, I don't know many details about this case but I thought you could only be found guilty if the proof was beyond a shadow of a doubt?

Beyond "reasonable doubt".

And it's the jury that gets to decide whether there's reasonable doubt, so the standard is extremely variable.

I don't know much about hitmen or the case in question, but off the top of my head it doesn't sound like a terrible choice.

You can buy a .22 rifle without any sort of record-keeping, they don't cost that much, neither the gun nor the ammo will raise any eyebrows, they're still very lethal at close range, and depending on the ammo you use they don't make that much noise, making it easy to fire off a couple shots and leave undetected.

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