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DO MY EYES DECIEVE ME?

I had a case a while back where the client was charged with a series of night time burglaries of various retail establishments; mostly convenience stores and delicatessens. The police were desparate to close out a whole bunch of unsolved cases similar to the dozen or so our client was about to go down for. The guy had a history of burglaries but he also had a rocksolid alibi: He was in a locked-down rehab facility. The problem was that surveillance cameras in one of the jobs got a really good shot of a guy who (if it wasn't the client) could have been his twin brother.

The image above is a facsimilie of the photo that we got in discovery. No doubt about it; here was the client staring at the camera through the front window of the store. Note the reverse image of the lettering on the window glass. Time to think about a plea. Right?

Not quite. After staring at this image and several others in the file for months (fortunately the client was out on bail) we realized that what we believed to be window glass lettering turned out to be the date and time stamp on the security camera video footage. That date and time coincided with the date and time our guy was safely tucked in his bed at the shelter. It should have been obvious but no one could get over the resemblance of the burglar in the photo to our client.

Case Dismissed.

Full post as published by Of a Public Defender's Life on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).