

Man uses Facebook to track down assault suspect - te_platt
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9689883

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DanielStraight
Why would anyone trust his identification of the suspect in a line-up after he
had already decided who the attacker was and seen a picture on Facebook? Even
if the person he found on Facebook wasn't the attacker, he would have picked
him out of a line-up because of seeing his Facebook picture.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It doesn't actually specify that there was any images on Facebook.

The whole story is weird though. If someone tells you they own the land you're
on and then assaults you, you go to the police and say "the owner of that land
assaulted me" and they'll take care of the rest. No need for a diversion via
google and facebook.

~~~
DanielStraight
Therein lies the problem. Someone _told_ him they owned the land (actually
someone told him that their family owned the land). If someone tells you that
their family owns a piece of land, first of all, you have no proof that they
are telling the truth. Even assuming they are telling the truth, if they have
a large family of people who look similar, Googling for who owns the land will
not necessarily give you the individual who told you their family owned the
land. That's the problem. The victim Googled about the owner of a piece of
land and decided based on the results of that search who assaulted him. Given
that identification of attackers is rather imperfect to begin with, I would
not trust the victim's identification in this case. Simply seeing that a given
person owned the land on which he was attacked could have convinced him that
that person was the attacker even if he wasn't. You could say that Facebook
was like a line-up and the victim identified his attacker on Facebook, but
this line-up would not have stood up in court if done as a real line-up. You
can't bring one person into a line-up and tell the victim that the person owns
the land on which they were assaulted. _Of course_ they'll identify them as
the attacker.

