Your Black World reports.
A man in New York was sent to jail for nearly seven month after several victims falsely identified him as the man on a police sketch. He was accused of four muggings, where the victims all picked him out of a lineup. Lanell Dowling, the 26-year old man who had the misfortune of too closely resembling an armed robber, had all of the charges dropped this week when cell phone records proved him to be innocent.
In addition to using cell phone records to declare his innocence, police were also able to track the activity on his Myspace page. He was arrested on April 3, 2010 and accused of robbing four old women in Brooklyn over a two-day period. He was identified as the assailant after someone called police stating that he looked like the man in the picture.
Dowling’s mother, Denise, said that she had just arrived home at 4 a.m. from a late shift and police came to her house at 6 a.m., looking for her son. She said that when she called him, he said that he was going to go to the police station to speak with officers to prove that he had nothing to do with the crime. He was then (according to his mother) “grabbed on the street” by the police on his way into the precinct and taken to a police lineup.
All four of the victims picked Dowling out of the lineup, but his attorney says that he was the only one who even looked anything like the picture. He was then sent to Rikers Island with a $100,000 bail. After spending seven months incarcerated, bail was reduced to $20,000.
“I freaked out. I almost thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown,” Denise Dowling said. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
Dowling’s lawyer continued to work for his client’s exoneration. The victims of the crime would not speak to him, so he went through cell phone records. He was able to track Dowling’s location at the times when he allegedly committed the crimes, finding that he was at his apartment every time. He also used his Myspace activity as further verification.
All charges were dropped this week, but it’s not hard to predict that there might be a lawsuit.
