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Criminal law – Evidence – Identification – Whether trial judge erred by relying upon witness’s identification of accused on Facebook despite good reason for finding identification was unreliable – What guidance should be prescribed in assessing the weight or admissibility of identification evidence obtained through lay internet investigations on social media?

In the early morning hours of January 1, 2011, two men had an altercation outside a nightclub, The altercation led to a chase and a fatal shooting a few blocks away. The men passed nearby security cameras. Various eyewitness saw different parts of the events. No witness knew the shooter. No forensic evidence tied Mr. Mohamed to the shooting. An expert could neither identify nor exclude Mr. Mohamed based on the security camera video recordings. A friend of the victim, Mr. Emam, identified Mr. Mohamed at trial as the shooter. He had seen the shooter’s face briefly from a distance outside the nightclub. He described the shooter that night in a 911 call and to the police. Two days after the shooting, he described the shooter to a group of friends of the victim. Another man thought he knew the identity of the shooter. He showed Mr. Emam Facebook photos and pointed to a man in the photos. Mr. Emam recognised the man in the photos as the shooter. The friend identified the man in the photos as Mr. Mohamed.