Using Transit Can Save Your Life
That might be one aspect to riding the bus and train that a bicycle just cannot get you - an electronic record of your whereabouts:
Murder Suspect Has Witness: A MetroCard
By BENJAMIN WEISER
Published: November 18, 2008When Jason Jones was arrested in a fatal shooting in the Bronx in May, he told the police that he had been nowhere near the scene. He said he had left work, ridden the bus with some co-workers and cashed his paycheck, and later had taken a subway to see his girlfriend.
Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Jones and his older brother, Corey, in the shooting, saying they had killed the victim because he had been a government witness in drug and gun cases. Both men could face the death penalty if the government decides to seek it.
But in recent weeks, the case has taken an extraordinary turn — because of Jason Jones’s MetroCard.
…
With that, and a photograph snapped of Mr. Jones, 26, as he cashed his paycheck, his lawyers argued that it was impossible for him to have committed the crime. Both brothers have been released on bond for now, an unusual step in a federal murder case, while prosecutors say they are continuing to investigate.
The prosecutors still want to convict the other brother - based on an already-proven-faulty eyewitness identification. If you follow the Innocence Project - and every good human being should - you would know that eyewitness identification is crap - it almost certainly helps to execute innocent Americans every year.
Luckily, this one guy had cashed his check, too - so he had a photo, which presumably helped to link him with his MetroCard. That’s something us bicyclists could still count on.
Maybe us bikers could count on bike-sharing systems, like Velib, for an electronic record of our whereabouts. We’re not quite as geographically confined as motorized transport riders, so our alibis would not be as tight, but those records might still come in handy.
‘Surveillance State’ — scary? Yes.
But one less innocent person executed by the State sounds pretty good to me.
Maybe it’s worth a trade-off. White folks like me with access to money if we really really need it don’t have much to worry about, relatively speaking, but DNA testing and the ‘new DNA testing’ - electronic trails - can be especially useful for poor and black people who get ensnared by the criminal (in)justice system.
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