I'm a little confused here. It turned out that it was his mother's ex-boyfriend, who had taken his car without permission. That explains the car, but how does it explain the location? Did he just happen to also leave close to there and was moving in a similar pattern? Was the phone inside the car?
Really, the issue here was the car, without which they wouldn't have had enough evidence to get the person's information in the first place. Are you not partly responsible to whom you give your car to?
From the article: "...Mr. Molina had sometimes signed in to other people’s phones to check his Google account. That could lead someone to appear in two places at once, though it was not clear whether that happened in this case."
If this is how it really happened then the investigators didn't even bother to crosscheck the data with the cell tower information (assuming the telco logs this info). Sending false location data to google shouldn't be that hard, but it should be a lot harder to fake the cell tower connections.
If someone steals my car and uses it when committing a crime, I can accept that may well lead to questioning me. But I don't think it justifies keeping me in jail for a week.
Really, the issue here was the car, without which they wouldn't have had enough evidence to get the person's information in the first place. Are you not partly responsible to whom you give your car to?