'How a selfie saved a Texas man from 99 years in prison'

[i'm not sure if this is appropriate for PN, so I'll accept any moderator's decision to remove this post.]

 

The next time someone wants to include you in a selfie, perhaps you should accept. Just make sure they post it on social media. I have to admit I really don't like them, though.

 

Story: How a selfie saved a Texas man from 99 years in prison

 

I am not a fan of the surveillance state, but if private citizens have dashcams and so on, perhaps that's a very good thing in the long run.

Probably very interesting, but I can't access it. Anyone else have this issue ?

Same here.

Online search for @Karim Ghantous ' headline revealed no working link to an entire story either.

Opens just fine for me - don't know if it belongs here, not a lot of photo interest past the headline and a snap. This is a link to a U.S. TV station, someone in the UK mentioned previously that there was a U.S. Tourisim site he couldn't access. Joys of the internet!

How a selfie saved a Texas man from 99 years in prison

In 2017, Christopher Precopia was charged with a felony he knew he hadn't committed.

 

Author: Tony Plohetski

Published: 4:27 PM CST November 12, 2018

Updated: 7:01 AM CST November 13, 2018

 

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — The morning of September 22, 2017, Cristopher Precopia went to work at a lumber yard in Georgetown.

 

By the end of the day, he was in jail facing 99 years in prison.

 

But he didn't know why.

 

Why had police come to his work and arrested him? Why was he being accused of these horrible crimes? Who was accusing him?

 

She said he broke into her home in Temple.

 

She said he sliced an "X" into her chest with a box cutter.

 

She said it happened on Sept. 20, 2017 around 7:20 p.m.

 

She was his high school girlfriend. The two dated several years earlier, but he couldn't remember the last time the two had contact.

 

Now Precopia was facing a felony charge: burglary of a habitation with the intent to commit other crimes.

 

"I had no idea why everything was happening, and I was lost," he said.

 

Precopia was taken to the Williamson County Jail, where his parents posted a $150,000 bond. Then they began fighting to prove his innocence.

 

"I was going to sleep hoping I wouldn't wake up," he said. "Just to trying to get away from it," Precopia said.

 

The selfie that saved him

Precopia knew he didn't do it. He knew he couldn't have done it.

 

On the night of the alleged attack, he was with his mother, Erin, at a Northwest Austin hotel about 65 miles from the accuser's home.

 

"I'm thinking, 'this is awesome. By the grace of God, she said it happened on the day when I can say totally, 100 percent, where he was at," Erin Precopia said.

 

There were sworn affidavits from several people who were with him that evening.

 

There were pictures to prove it, and they were posted on Facebook. Timestamped. Geo-located.

 

An alibi.

 

"Most of the time, we deal with gray matters," attorney Rick Flores said. "It's not normally black or white. But this is one of those cases where I could definitely prove he did not commit this offense."

 

Guilty until proven innocent?

The question still remained: Why had Precopia been arrested, and had police done a thorough investigation? There was hard evidence. It just needed to be found.

 

Police experts say, in most cases, investigators should try to interview a suspect before filing charges to determine if they have a possible alibi. In Precopia's case, police reports show he returned a phone call to police and left a message before they moved to arrest him.

 

"You may not get any more information than you had, but it gives you an opportunity for the suspect to react, respond, deny," Bruce Mills, a former Austin assistant police chief and policing consultant, said. "Certainly a case where the suspect appeared to be available, it would be more step you could take."

 

Nine months after Precopia's arrest, Flores said he took the evidence of an alibi to Bell County prosecutors, who dropped the charge "in the interest of justice."

 

Temple Police wouldn't talk about their handling of the case. Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza said, "We are always willing to listen and examine new information, and that's exactly what we did in this case."

 

Precopia's accuser told police that the two had a troubled relationship when they dated in high school several years ago, and she cited that as a reason she reported that he assaulted her.

 

More than a year later, Precopia is ready to move forward.

 

"I'm ready to actually live my life, the way I want to, without having any kind of worry that this can come back and hurt me," he said.

 

Editor's note: KVUE is not identifying Precopia's accuser because she hasn't been charged with a crime.

 

Thanks for this. One wonders why his accuser has had no charges brought, however.

interesting story. lucky there was a photo but im sure if the investigators checked thed accused story, they would have accepted his alibi.

 

 

 

the link worked fine on my android tablet.

Well, she’s a female. He’s a male. So naturally, the guy is presumed to be the "predator” and instigator. Didn’t you get the memo? All women these days are innocent angelic creatures who never lie or sin, lol.

 

Of course, forgive me, I had forgotten.

Opened fine for me to. So no mention what happened to the ex girlfriend or should I say X girlfriend. Seems to me if you try to set someone up for a 99 year prison term they are psychotic. Filing a false police report, perjury...and because of the accusation very severe. Hope she gets a few years taste of her own medicine if she did this.

 

I worked with a guy in New York City that claimed a 7-11 receipt got him off of being accused of a robbery because he matched the description of the person who commited the crime. He had proof he was somewhere else at the time with a Debit Card receipt and the cops could even go look at the store video footage.

 

Always take the receipt, lol. I also have a dual camera dash cam, one faces forward and one faces back. To many people out there that will try to blame an accident on you if it can get them out of liability and pin it on you. The darn things a cheap enough, I was seeing Uniden Dash Cams advertised for $25 on Black Friday. They run around $30-$80 depending on model and where you buy it. Cheap insurance.

I looked to see if I could find out more details than what’s been given. I couldn’t so I’m not about to speculate or draw sweeping conclusions about society based on a very incomplete Internet item. Each “source” I read that carried the story had picked it up from the very same original source and copied the original text exactly, so I can’t even find corroboration for any if it.

 

caveat emptor.

 

In the meantime, there are many articles on the Internet which cite a variety of studies and statistics to document the relatively few cases of false allegations compared to the relatively high number of unreported sexual abuse cases. These are helpful only if one wants to base one’s thinking on evidence.

 

Here’s just one, from Britain, but google will find many others ...

 

The truth about false assault accusations

By the way, even though it follows Mark's post, my response above is meant as a general response to the thread, not to Mark specifically.