This is just a normal route

The plea of having been at the time of the Commission of an Act elsewhere than at the place

of the Commission. This is the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of the word alibi. The word

alibi originated in the late 17th century in Latin. The original Latin word simply meant

in another place. In any criminal investigation, the alibi of a suspect should be a cornerstone

of the case. Stated simply, if the suspect has been confirmed to be in a different location

than at the crime scene at the time the crime was committed, he or she could not have committed

said crime. It's a simple concept, but one far more convoluted than one might like to believe.

Several months ago on this very program, I interviewed Michael Ware. Mike is the executive director

of the Innocence Project of Texas. He's been practicing law for over 30 years, and back in

October he told our listeners that in 30 years of practice, he has never once seen an alibi sway

a jury's verdict. I was shocked to hear this from Mike. Surely if an investigator or a prosecutor

or most certainly a juror was presented with compelling evidence or testimony that a suspect was,

as Webster puts it, elsewhere, during the Commission of a Crime, they would be cleared of all charges.

It only makes sense. They weren't there. They could not have committed the crime.

The reality of the situation is that Mike Ware was right. In today's society, we have far more

resources to figure out where we were at any given time. We have GPS on our phones and cars,

and we have social media posts, timestamp text messages, and we take exponentially more pictures

today than we did, say, 25 years ago. We capture everything on our smartphones now, and we are a

society obsessed with sharing every intimate, tiny detail of our lives with the entire world.

In 1993, security cameras were an expensive luxury item that most small businesses couldn't afford,

and the cameras that did exist recorded under tapes that were expensive and had limited storage

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