Student Googles Himself, Finds He's Accused of Murder 184
University of Florida student Zachary Garcia was more than a little surprised to find out he was wanted for murder after Googling his name. It turns out the police were looking for a different man but had mistakenly used Garcia's photo. From the article: "Investigators originally released a driver's license photo of Zachary Garcia — spelled with an 'A' — but it was Zachery Garcia — spelled with an 'E'— who was charged in connection with the crime."
Sorry, Mr. Hitlar, (Score:5, Funny)
We were looking for Hitler.
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Have you seen my friend Kyle? He's about this tall...
Re:Sorry, Mr. Hitlar, (Score:4, Funny)
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LOL. Awesome quote from Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). Nice to see another fan.
He is usually known for:
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
- Life of Brian (1979)
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
All cult classics.
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My user name was meant to be "Ole Biscuitbarrel" which is also an MP ref, with an accent mark over the first 'e,' but /.'s way of handling characters it doesn't like in the registration process is to simply ignore them, which is pretty lame. I should just reregister as Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F'tang F'tang or the like.
But some call you... Tim?
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What I find strange is that the actual burglary culprits were charged with murder when the person who died appears to have been shot by the homeowner: http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=149990&catid=8 [wtsp.com]
Charging them with burglary - fair.
Endangering lives - fair.
Murder? Sounds daft to me.
Is this sort of thing normal in the USA or just Florida?
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Well, Considering that none of them would have been shot had they decided to obey the law and NOT rob a home, then yes, it's fair.
Please note that in Florida (as in many other states in the US) a homeowner cannot be charged for using lethal force to defend himself, his family, and his property against unlawful intruders.
Thus, by willfully choosing to commit a crime, they placed themselves into harms way and are each fully responsible for any outcome.
What seems daft to me is charging a VICTIM with a crime w
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Well, Considering that none of them would have been shot had they decided to obey the law and NOT rob a home, then yes, it's fair.
Still seems unfair and ridiculous to me.
That's like saying they committed murder if they cross the street after the burglary and a car knocks down one of them and kills him. Or a tree in the garden falls on him.
Sure someone died. That doesn't mean the rest murdered him - they certainly never intended to.
Pin something else on them if they insist, but not murder.
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Well, Considering that none of them would have been shot had they decided to obey the law and NOT rob a home, then yes, it's fair.
Still seems unfair and ridiculous to me.
That's like saying they committed murder if they cross the street after the burglary and a car knocks down one of them and kills him. Or a tree in the garden falls on him.
Sure someone died. That doesn't mean the rest murdered him - they certainly never intended to.
Pin something else on them if they insist, but not murder.
It's not unfair at all. One of them would not have died if all of them had not decided to commit a crime.
The point is, Once you decide to involve yourself in criminal activity, you are fully responsible for anything that happens in relation to that. The one kid died SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE the group of them decided to burglarize the home of an armed citizen.
Now, perhaps "Involuntary Manslaughter" might be a more appropriate charge in the semantic sense as they obviously had no intention of one of them dying.
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It's not unfair at all. One of them would not have died if all of them had not decided to commit a crime.
Even if one of them would not have died, had they not decided to commit a crime, still doesn't make it murder.
That's like saying they committed murder if they cross the street after the burglary and a car knocks down one of them and kills him. Or a tree in the garden falls on him. Or if the kid got so excited that he got a heart/asthma attack and died.
Using that sort of logic to justify calling it murder is like blaming a butterfly for a particular typhoon because it flapped its wings. Yes there wouldn't ha
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Yes. In my opinion they were responsible for burglary, but not murder.
And here lies the problem. You are considering your uninformed OPINION as equal to the considered law in Florida. The two are not equal.
I have been attempting to explain the existing law in Florida in a manner that you will understand, but apparently you aren't going to understand it because you consider your uninformed opinion so highly.
To Wit: You are simply WRONG. Your attempt to conflate "The Butterfly Effect" with Florida law is at best, a stretch, and at worst, insultingly inane. Using your logic
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And here lies the problem. You are considering your uninformed OPINION as equal to the considered law in Florida. The two are not equal.
No. You're ASSUMING that I consider my opinion equal to that stupid interpretation of local law, and I certainly don't. Where have I indicated that I consider my opinion equal?
So you've got the "here lies the problem" part wrong. And it's even irrelevant. You should be saying stuff like "here lies the problem, the kids are responsible for murder because [list of reasons], and your reasoning is wrong because [list of reasons]".
Yes you can say "because Local Law Says So", but you won't be adding much value.
that the Murder charge is "daft" and leave it at just shows your ignorance of local law.
If
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Even more odd, according to the above article, even the guys who didn't enter the house were charged with the murder. Does it make sense for the getaway driver to be charged with murder because someone inside got shot?
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What seems daft to me is charging a VICTIM with a crime when all they are doing is defending themselves. This is the situation in far too many places around the world.
Which is why I fully support the right of pedestrians to use automatic weapons against any car driving above the speed limit.
Also, don't forget about the right of RIAA/MPAA to form assassination squads to chase down copyright violators. Seriously, they need to be allowed to defend their property
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It's called the Felony murder rule [wikipedia.org].
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Sure but that says:
First, when an offender kills accidentally or without specific intent to kill in the course of an applicable felony, what might have been manslaughter is escalated to murder. Second, it makes any participant in such a felony criminally liable for any deaths that occur during or in furtherance of that felony.
1) The participants in the felony did not actually do the killing, the homeowner killed a participant.
2) Having a participant killed by the homeowner in self defense is not in furtherance of the felony nor an integral part of the felony.
So it still seems wrong to me to charge the rest of the felony participants for murder just because the homeowner killed a participant in self-defense.
I wonder how many (Score:2)
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My name first name and last name match the first and middle name of an occultist, so I get him whenever I google myself.
I wonder if my being wanted for murder would push me up the results over that guy.... This is a dangerous train of thought.
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I am NOT ILLWILL!!
I am NOT THAT stupid!
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So, you're not THAT "Michael Bolton"?
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Why should I have to change my name? He's the one who sucks^H^H^H^H^H killed someone.
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Wait, wouldn't he have been googling "too common"?
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I actually had a friend who lived in a town named Street (Street, MD).
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There is an address 123 West South Street in Warrensburg, MO.
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I actually had a friend who lived in a town named Street (Street, MD).
I used to live on "Avenue Road". That always brought a chuckle whenever someone asked my address.
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Better yet...here is the intersection of This Way & That Way [google.com].
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Living in Yellowknife? Yes, yes they would.
He will have a hard time geting a job now (Score:2)
He will have a hard time getting a job now.
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"Why should I have to change my name, he's the one that sucks!"
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"Why should I have to change my name, he's the one that sucks!"
...welcome to America.
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Someone at my university wrote something and included Soundex searches. It is really dead on for finding the right spelling of the name with a misspelled name.
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Getting a job? Hell this explains why he couldn't get a date over the last couple of years. Didn't you know that women google you now before going on dates to see if you are some looser or something embarrassing might pop up and shame them in front of their girlfriends?
I had one girl shoot me down because she could fine 20 to 30 others with the same name as mine but not me on a google search. She claimed I was using an alias.
Re:He will have a hard time geting a job now (Score:5, Insightful)
I had one girl shoot me down because she could fine 20 to 30 others with the same name as mine but not me on a google search. She claimed I was using an alias.
You may not believe me, but you dodged a bullet.
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What's wrong with my 3rd grade education? And exactly where exactly is the incorrect spelling?
Perhaps you haven't learned as much in all your years of schooling as I have in my 4 years.
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And there's also "fine" instead of "find".
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I'd say he'll probably have an easier time than if he hadn't found this.
A week from now, the first hit on Google for his name will be this story. Amusing, and must have given him the shock of his life, but won't seriously concern anyone.
Last week, they'd have seen the same thing as Garcia.
North by Northwest (Score:2)
Where's the rest of the video? (Score:1)
Next item on "The Rundown" is "Naked Ladies"... I'd rather watch that story.
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That's nothing! (Score:2)
I googled myself the other day and found out I was murdered!
Re:That's nothing! (Score:4, Interesting)
You laugh, but a man, with the same first and last name as I, was murdered in Jamaica several years ago in a rather brutal fashion: he was decapitated with a machete. He was leading a ring of phone scammers and some of the other members of the ring had a disagreement over the money.
Another man with the same first and last name is serving a prison sentence for weapons charges.
Another man with the same first and last name is a doctor.
Another is a low-budget file directory.
I could go on.
Its fun having a common name.
No, I didn't google myself as a result of this story. I do from time to time when bored with nothing else to do. If you google my name now, you don't get the murder story until very far into the results, but it was among the top results when it happened four or five years ago.
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You laugh, but a man, with the same first and last name as I, was murdered in Jamaica several years ago in a rather brutal fashion: he was decapitated with a machete. He was leading a ring of phone scammers and some of the other members of the ring had a disagreement over the money.
If I were you, I'd make sure my toilet bowl is clean enough to drink from. [youtube.com]
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Yeah. That's one of the best films ever.
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Heh, "file directory" should be film director.
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For a second there I thought your name was Norton Commander [wikipedia.org]!
Naked Ladies (Score:5, Funny)
Am I the only one that noticed "NAKED LADIES" on the news bar to the right of the screen at the start of video? I have the whole internet at my fingertips and I'm thinking "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NAKED LADIES???"
(Semi)-Common name FTW (Score:2)
Stories like this make me glad I have a fairly common name that is shared with multiple famous people, including a former NFL player, a dead rapper and a famous architect.
Pretty Crazy (Score:1)
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The two pictures even looked a lot a like.
You know we pay people a lot of money to be good at this kind of thing, right? I'm not so sure I'd want to let them off the hook so easily.
There's a movie for this... (Score:4, Interesting)
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As stated clearly in Internet Posting Control Commission policy 57Q paragraph 14 subsection xli, in order to claim 'Inbefore' status, you must fill out forms 27B-6, ID10-T, and P3B-C4K in triplicate, and get approvals from the Comment Working Group 2 weeks before you make the comment. Any questions or concerns about this policy should be directed to the Complaints Reporting SubCommittee of the IPCC on the third Thursday of the month.
that isn't the real crime here (Score:4, Insightful)
The real travesty is not that law enforcement mixed him up with another kid, its that the kid is charged with felony murder because the homeowner of the house he was robbing shot at and killed one of his friends. While I cannot necessarily condemn the homeowner for his act, to charge the three surviving robbers with murder is ludicrous. One teenager paid the highest possible price for his foolish act, and now the criminal justice system is going to destroy three other lives? what the hell Florida? If I jaywalk with three other people and a motor runs over one of us, are the rest of us guilty of vehicular manslaughter?
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That's the brilliant genius of the felony murder law.
If someone dies while you're commiting a felony - even if you didn't pull the trigger - you're liable for felony murder.
In this case, I suppose the justification is that if the kids never tried to rob the house their companion never would have died and thus they are guilty of felony murder as a result. Honestly though I think the whole law is too broad and overreaching. There shouldn't be such harsh penalties for an indirect responsibility.
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I could understand the charge if an innocent party is killed, but not when one of the felons is killed.
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If you are in any way at fault... i.e. you're involved in an even a misdemeanor and you have that joint in your pocket, it adds a felony charge to the whole thing.
So in theory, if you had a joint in your pocket, someone rams your car, and the other driver dies, you could conceivably be tried for felony murder (though IANAL, take what I say with a grain of salt).
Re:that isn't the real crime here (Score:5, Informative)
This is a basic tenant in all courts in America: If you initiate a crime, you are charged with ALL consequences that take place as a result of your crime.
Basically, it works like this:
If you do crime A which has results B and C, you will be charged with all results. If you commit burglary, and someone dies as a result of your burglary, it is your fault. And frankly, that's the way it should be.
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Re:that isn't the real crime here (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you cannot see the immorality of this kind of logic is further evidence of the systemic breakdown of both morality and law within your (our) society. Theft is not murder, but by the twisted logic of your court system, it can be if a homeowner uses lethal force to protect his physical possessions. Now, having said that, I can see where something like this can originate from. If you're getting robbed, and you bolt out into traffic to get away only to be squished by a truck, the robber is culpible. Run over a pedestrian while trying to get away? Culpible. Robbing a house only to have your friend shot and killed by the homeowner? Probably not the original intent of the bill but hey, slippery slopes tend to end up in ridiculous situations like this.
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There is a reasonable expectation that the homeowner will defend himself.
How is shooting the intruder any diffrent then running over someone while escaping.
Both were forced by the robber.
The robber put in motion the events could reasonably be foreseen as resulting in the death. If the robbery did not happen , the person would not be dead. I believe that the legal term is 'depraved indifference to human life'.
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If you can't differentiate between those two acts, where one death is a direct results of the criminals actions and the other death is a direct result of the victims actions, then you shouldn't be debating this. Reasonable expectation of a homeowner defending himself doesn't morally permit the criminal justice system to stick the responsibility of the criminals death on another criminal, no matter how emotionally satisfying that may be.
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Perpetrators are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others, which is what this boils down to. If they were directly responsible for the death, then we wouldn't be having this arguement. But they weren't, the homeowner was (justifiably of course). Do you enjoy taking the blame for someone elses actions? I sure don't and I think its absolutely wrong for any organization to force that kind of responsibility onto someone. whats next, putting the crimes of the father onto the son? Where does t
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citation needed.
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Criminal runs over a pedestrian while trying to get away. He is in control of the vehicle which caused the death. Normally he would get criminal negligence causing death or vehicular manslaughter, a far lighter penalty than felony murder. In this scenario, the law works as it allows the prosecutors to charge him with what he deserves.
Criminal breaks into a house, and his friend gets shot by the homeowner. He was not in control of the homeowner or gun. The one responsible for this tragedy is the homeowner an
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Nobody is saying the homeowner should not defend himself, just that it's ludicrous that the other kids are being tried for murder. They did not murder anyone, the homeowner did.
If the drug the other person with them and held him against is will act as a human target, then you would have a point.
And no, the legal term does not apply here. None of the dependents acting in a manner that disregarding anyones life.
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The root cause of that persons death was at the hands of the homeowner who was defending his person or property. That doesn't mean that the dead teenagers friend is liable for that death.
I get the impression that you and others seem to think that there needs to be someone found responsible for that teenagers death. There is, and he's dead due to a monumental mistake on his part. His friend/partner, however, isn't.
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The difference is that the robbers all knowingly and willingly accepted the natural dangers of robbing a home. A 3rd party who gets run over or a homeowner that gets killed did NOT willingly accept the risk by word or deed.
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Felony murder law (Score:4, Insightful)
On a complete tangent, reading this article is the first time I've noticed the ugly little details of the "felony murder law".
You'd think that means if you kill someone while committing a felony that you can be charged with murder. That seems somewhat reasonable, although I can think of cases where it would be excessive.
It turns out if you break into a house for a robbery and some other guy that came with you kills someone maybe somewhere else in the house and you didn't even know you can still be charged with murder.
Now, that seems pretty unfair but we find out in this story that they can go even beyond that. In this story a couple of kids break into a house and the homeowner shoots and kills one of them. They then applied this law to charge the other kid with murder!
That's pretty messed up.
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That's pretty messed up.
uh not really, their actions are directly responsible for that other kid dying. they are very much culpable.
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And if you jaywalk with a friend, only to have your friend get hit by a car, you are guilty of vehicular manslughter.
Don't drop the soap.
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And if you jaywalk with a friend, only to have your friend get hit by a car, you are guilty of vehicular manslughter.
As a Floridian, I can happily inform you that jaywalking is one of the few things you can do in this State that isn't a felony.
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If you are guilty of any crime, YOU ARE GUILTY OF ALL CRIMES.
Principle of explosion, right?
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The kid died as a direct result of his own actions.
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A better example would be a case where a guy committed purgery when, on the stand, when he testified that he was with his wife on the night that his wife's sister was accused of drunk driving. Having told his wife that he was at work, he pisses off his wife so much that she pulls out a gun and shoots the Judge, all members of the Jury, and the husband's lawyer.
Obviously, he should be charged with murder.
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You are wrong that the architect example is the same thing.
Purgery example: The man committed a felony (purgery) and someone was murdered in relation to it.
Architect example: The architect committed no felony and someone was murdered in relation to it.
Zatar was pointing out that Florida law says you can be charged with homicide if someone dies IN RELATION TO YOU COMMITTING A FEL
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On the show, the defendant was simply driving some friends to a bar. In the bar the friends were shaking down the owner for some money that was owed. The friends didn't know that there were 4 off duty cops in there and one of the friends ends up shot and killed. The argument was that, even though he was outside, the defendant w
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Your honour, my only crime was pulling the trigger of this gun, I had no intention that it would begin the chain of events that lead to the death of my ex-wife.
Could be worst (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a funny mistake but... you know... at least it was the civilian police, and civilian courts.
He should be glad his last name isn't El Masri: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri [wikipedia.org]:
On a related note, a friend of mine recently found he had a warrant for issues that are besides the point. Lets just say, dubious charges of a domestic nature. So, upon finding this out, and verifying it, he drove to a friends place to "lay low" while he calls his lawyer and figures what to do next. The advice he got? Interestingly.... go to the court house in the AM and surrender directly to the court. In this case, that meant he a) looked responsible to the judge b) got it over with quickly and c) denied the police (who had only heard the other side of the story) no chance to "recommend bail".
In the end, he walked out on his on recognizance. (well, end of the day, if not the story)
-Steve
Wanted for murder (Score:2, Interesting)
I can empathize with the shock of finding out you're wanted for something this severe that you have absolutely no involvement in. While we lived outside of the US, my brother had his car stolen, so we reported it to the police that very night.
A couple of weeks later, a magazine notorious for reporting on gory crimes with graphic photos (at the time, everyone joked that "blood leaked out of the magazine if you squeezed it hard enough") had both my brother and myself accused as murderers in a crime that invol
DJDevon3 (Score:2, Insightful)
Which brings up a nifty scenario if you don't want to be contacted by old girlfriends. Just find a state vs drug dealer affidavit online somewhere, fill in the blanks with you name, create your
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Mixtape (Score:2)
In August of 2004, the local authorities of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina were called to the apartment of one Joe Smith. Neighbors suspected a suicide.
But Joe Smith was not dead. He was curled up in a ball in the corner of his room laughing and texting himself on his phone.
Before Joe Smith was taken into protective custody, he handed a homemade video to the police labeled MY ALMOST SUICIDE.
This is the transcript of the video.
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Close enough.
To quote National Treasure, "Someone's has to go to jail."
If someone is going to jail, make sure its the client.