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.
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.
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.
