
Murder Suspect Has Witness: A MetroCard (2008) - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/nyregion/19metrocard.html
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lotsofpulp
>During the interrogation, he said, it occurred to him that he had used his
MetroCard on the bus and the subway, and he asked the police to check it. A
detective took the card briefly, and then gave it back to him, and there was
no further discussion about the card, he said.

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.

~~~
gamblor956
Per danso's comment...he wasn't jailed for this. Charges were dropped.

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alistairSH
No, he was in jail prior to the charges being dropped.

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danso
Note that the charges were officially dropped a month later [0]. I submitted
the original article because it’s almost 10 years to the day, and it contained
info about other cases involving the MeteoCard.

0\. [https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/after-
metrocar...](https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/after-metrocard-
alibi-murder-charges-are-dropped/)

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gammateam
The Bronx is a civil rights disaster.

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.

~~~
tnuc
The New York City marathon goes thought the Bronx.

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.

~~~
InitialLastName
The New York City marathon goes through the [worst, least interesting part of]
the Bronx, for like a mile and a half.

The other side has way more trees.

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phkahler
From TFA: “It seems somewhat implausible,” he said, that the government’s
witness saw the event and was “right about one and mistaken about the other.”

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.

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smcl
I’ve heard a bit about various Police departments and prosecutors burying
evidence that could clear someone’s name, so I’m surprised they only ignored
it and didn’t just discard the metro card.

~~~
propter_hoc
Maybe you heard wrong, and most police officers and public justice employees
are actually generally good people, who just want justice to be served and for
the innocent to be free.

~~~
teddyh
And once they get a conviction, the person they caught is, _by definition_ ,
not an innocent. See how easy that was?

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.

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metrofab
So, I'm looking at this image, and a handful of details strike me about the
geography...

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/11/19/nyregion/18metroc...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2008/11/19/nyregion/18metrocard.map.190.jpg)

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.
    

Based on the map, any of these data points have a yawning gulf of time between
them. maybe an hour each.

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.

~~~
pdpi
> 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.

~~~
metrofab
So why do people get shot at all? Why do people get shot over arguments, out
on the street, in public? Where do the guns come from?

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.

~~~
chumway
Except why does any of this make sense? Just because it can't be pinned on
anyone, it has to be them? Why should it be a slam dunk conviction simply by
process of elimination?

We don't know the witness or even the victim, by way of this article. Who were
they?

