At 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, New Yorker Rodney Bradford, 19, sat in his father’s apartment in Harlem and typed a Facebook status update–a slang version of “where’s my pancakes?” At that same moment, a young man was committing a robbery in the Brooklyn housing project where Bradford lived. Bradford was charged with the crime, but the charges were dropped when prosecutors confirmed that he was on Facebook, says the New York Times. A legal expert said it is the first known case of a Facebook update as alibi evidence–but probably not the last.
John G. Browning, a Dallas lawyer who studies social networking and the law, said, “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.” With more people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.