Charges dropped against falsely accused Texas man
By
a reporter
20 November 2018
A young Texas man has escaped the threat of life imprisonment on false charges of burglary, leveled by an ex-girlfriend, because a selfie taken with his mother proved he could not have committed the crime. Media reports brought the outrageous frame-up to national attention this week, five months after the charges were dropped.
The police apparently did not even conduct an interview with the young man before arresting him, the procedure normally carried out to determine whether a “suspect” has an alibi and may be wrongly accused.
The case is a warning of the dangers inherent in efforts to undermine the presumption of innocence and the claim that all accusers must be “believed—central themes of the #MeToo movement promoted by leading media outlets such as the New York Times.
Christopher Precopia, 21, was arrested on September 22, 2017, at his job, on a warrant filed by Bell County, Texas, where his former girlfriend lives. She charged that he had broken into her home and attacked her, carving an “X” onto her skin.
The arrest warrant claimed that police in Temple, Texas, “received a report of an assault with weapons.” A policeman was sent to the home of the girlfriend, and she said that Precopia “came towards her in an aggressive manner and pushed her to the ground, punched her in the face and cut her with a box cutter.”
According to a local television report, the woman declared in a handwritten statement, “I could hear the slices being made and it stung a lot,” adding that she escaped her attacker’s grasp, grabbed her Taser, turned, and “he was gone.”
Precopia was charged with first-degree felony burglary of a habitation with intent to commit additional…