Concert Calls Save Innocent Man From Jail

Nobody has ever been as happy they went to a reggae concert at Webster Hall as Shane Rhooms (via bitchcakes flickr stream).

A good reason to use your phone when you are at a concert? Good alibi. That's the lesson we're taking from the story of Shane Rhooms. It starts like this: On September 6 an assailant got off six shots at cops in Flatbush before running away. Those same officers later picked Rhooms mugshot out of a photo lineup and insisted he was their guy and locked him up in Riker's. Only problem? He kept insisting he was nowhere near Flatbush at the time, in fact he said he was at a reggae concert at Webster Hall.

The police eventually restarted their investigation after Rhooms passed a lie-detector test and let him out of jail (after three weeks!). Meanwhile, Rhooms lawyer went and dug up video footage of his client entering Webster Hall and cellphone records that proved he was in Manhattan at the time of the shooting (he had gotten separated from a friend at the concert and called to try and find him). Yesterday a judge dropped all charges against the innocent man.

Not that Rhooms' good news is sitting well in Police headquarters. "Detectives were and remain confident of information that led them to the suspect in the first place, of the subsequent police identifications and they remain skeptical of the purported alibi," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told the News. We honestly aren't sure how else they could be convinced.

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By Garth Johnston in News on December 22, 2010 4:59 PM

Comments [rss]

nicemarmot

It's not at all surprising that the cops wouldn't admit their mistake. Once they're convinced you're their guy, most of them won't ever change their minds, no matter what evidence they see to the contrary.

There is a great episode of the show Forensic Files that illustrates this. The cops arrested a woman for burning down her house with her husband inside, based on extremely sketchy "burn pattern" evidence. The only person who saw this burn pattern was a cop with limited experience. If you know anything about that kind of evidence you know it's extremely subjective. They had no other evidence whatsoever and all the other evidence indicated that the fire was an accident and that she was lucky to escape when her husband did not. Nevertheless, they put her on trial for first-degree murder. Her lawyers hired every arson and burn pattern expert they could find and every single one said that not only was the burn pattern not really a burn pattern, there was no evidence whatsoever of arson, motive or anything else. Most of the experts agreed to work for free because the woman was so clearly innocent - not only had she not committed a crime, no crime had ever taken place! She lost her husband and instead of getting to mourn, she was accused of a murder that never happened.

Of course the jury believed the real experts over the one cop and she was acquitted. The Forensic Files crew interviewed the cops afterwards and every one of them said that she got away with murder. Because most murderers commit the crime by burning down a house with themselves inside it and magically hiding every smidgen of evidence.

jaycjay

I hadn't heard anything about that specific case, but there's definitely a growing feeling that "burn pattern analysis" is generally nothing but hokum, essentially consisting of developing a theory as to what happened and then "seeing" whatever evidence is needed to support it.

nicemarmot

Yep. Several years ago I worked with a wildfire investigator and the first thing he taught us was that fires usually burn up all the evidence, so if you see something, it may very well be what you want to see instead of what's actually there. Unfortunately this kind of shoddy evidence is still in use.

harrisgraber

What's scary is that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, these police officers remain convinced of Rhooms' guilt. Obviously, they failed to identify the wrong man, but are too damned stubborn to admit their mistake.