An alibi will get you convicted (and studies prove it) | Rebuttal Pod

Is an alibi defense the key to the jailhouse door, or a noose around an innocent defendant's neck? 

Eric Morgan had 11 alibi witnesses to establish that he was at a two-day long sports competition—far away from the location of the crime he was accused of—supported by credit card receipts for his travel, meals, and purchases on the trip. Yet the prosecutor successfully argued that the witnesses were liars or mistaken. Morgan served 3 years in prison before DNA evidence exonerated him.

Reb pokes holes in our assumptions about seemingly "good" alibis, and you’ll find out why some lawyers say that never presenting an alibi is better than having one at all (“An alibi can only be one of two things: perfect or bad.“)

Enjoy.

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Listen on Apple Podcasts!: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/81-good-alibis-dont-exist/id1679880710?i=1000778000743

Listen on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZAwn6W2TDQlQsFwpVDSZm?si=8_4hvA-hSuaPMNyvtLn31w

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RESOURCES:
* The (Un)reliability of Alibi Corroborators: Failure to Recognize Faces of Briefly Encountered Strangers Puts Innocent Suspects at Risk (2016) - ⁠https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27757984/
* Memory Errors in Alibi Generation: How an Alibi Can Turn Against Us (2017) - ⁠https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bsl.2273⁠
* Wendy P. Heath, et al., "But I Wasn't There!" The Alibis of DNA Exonerees (2021) - ⁠https://wclawr.org/index.php/wclr/article/view/52/87⁠
* David Crump, Alibi (2025) ⁠https://mississippilawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/94MissLJ411.pdf⁠
* Lisa Steele, Alibi Defenses: Millstone or Key to the Jailhouse Door? (2021) ⁠https://www.publiccounsel.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Steele-March-16.pdf⁠

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00:00 - Case Begins
02:10 - WHY DO LAWYERS HATE THEM?
11:53 - MISTAKES = LIES.
19:45 - JURIES ARE THE WORST.
25:21 - PROSECUTORS DON'T HELP.
29:37 - ALIBIS HURT YOUR CASE.
43:19 - IN CONCLUSION...
43:50 - Reb's Rebuttal (IMPORTANT!)