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I was on a jury in the US for a case where the prosecution used text messages as a large chunk of how they tried (very badly) to make their case. Screenshots ta

I was on a jury in the US for a case where the prosecution used text messages as a large chunk of how they tried (very badly) to make their case. Screenshots taken from one party's device, with sporadic timestamps, no indications whether messages could have been deleted. It was a farce, I'd disbar someone who tried to make a case on such a flimsy reed.

londons_explore 6y ago
You would hope that if there were other messages which said the same story differently, the defence would have brought them to court. Unfortunately, I don't have faith in all defence lawyers to do this kind of thing - some "free because you're poor" lawyers might spend only 20 minutes per case...
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  It's because they are overworked and underresourced. Public defenders are some of the best people our legal systems have. Another possibility is that the investigators fail to share evidence as required.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    In many cases investigators don't look very hard for evidence which makes their case fall apart. Imagine a murder case where the accused claims he was at the cinema at the time. Often the police won't go to the cinema and get CCTV tapes to back up the claim - they'll just use blurry footage from the murder scene and claim "looks kinda like the same guy ish". I suspect there are a lot of cases of innocent people in prison simply because evidence of them being innocent was deliberately overlooked or not collected.
    - speeder 6y ago
      We had a case in Brazil that was both sad and absurdly silly. A woman was found murdered in a cemetery. She was in town for a university-related festival/party, and was staying temporarily with some other students. The police suspected the other students first, and went to their house, and found out: 1. One was an RPG player, had RPG books. 2. The other was a heavy metal fan and had heavy metal-related posters. 3. The other guy was into literature and had some 'dark' literature. So conclusion of the officers: it was a satanic cult, and the woman was killed in a "RPG Satanic Ritual" The prosecutor's office at first went with it too. Later, already mid-trial, the prosecutor changed, the new prosecutor found a lot more formerly-useful now useless evidence that the police seemly deliberately ignored: 1. The police had in evidence storage some bloodied clothes that they never ran DNA tests on, the DNA was now useless (it has been years since the actual murder). Also the evidence was probably contaminated, the storage consisted of stuffing all the evidence in trash bags and leaving them in a random room in the police station. 2. People told the police multiple times, that the woman had drug debts, but they were ignored. 3. A known drug dealer was seen on the day past the murder, riding a bike around town, with his t-shirt having red stains on it, police even seen the guy themselves, and didn't bother stopping him and checking his t-shirt. The new prosecutor despite seeing all this, had hands tied and just went along with what the police wanted, and tried to prove in court that they were "satanists". The ruling was this (the judge was quite upset at it too): 1. The prosecution failed to prove they were satanists, evidence pointed out to the accused living there by coincidence, and their hobbies being "dark" or "fantasy" were coincidence too, only one of them was an RPG player, only one of them was a heavy metal fan, and so on, they didn't shared their hobbies with each other. 2. And even if they WERE satanists (they weren't), in Brazil being a satanist is not a crime. 3. For some reason the prosecution provided zero evidence that was actually related to the murder, they only tried to prove the accused were satanists and presumed this would be enough to know they were the murderers, but they never tried to link the accused with the crime scene, didn't even tried to explain when they would been at the cemetery.
      - a0-prw 6y ago
        Certainly disgraceful, but I had to laugh because it read like one of those logic puzzles https://riddles.guru/riddles/einstein-zebra-puzzle/203/ https://riddles.guru/riddles/einstein-zebra-puzzle/203/
        bellyfullofbac 6y ago
        Off-topic, but Boy Einstein couldn't have created the puzzle like exactly described with those cigarette brands, because some of them were introduced much later in his life...
        bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        ok but it's not the Einstein Zebra puzzle, more like the Mo Fine Zebra puzzle (for a contemporary, albeit not peer)
    - neodymiumphish 6y ago
      To be fair, the amount of effort involved in verifying every little detail a witness/victim/subject provides is astronomical, not to mention the potential for a defense case based on the lack of effort to verify one fact when other facts were verified. In my old agency, we were required to do that type of thing. For example, we had a rape case where the rape occurred in a short-stay house (kind of like a hotel, but for families that require room for multiple kids/pets, etc). The subject only rented the house for one night, and the rape occurred in one of the bedrooms. By the time we got to the house, there had already been another guest for the night between him checking out and us arriving. We went to housekeeping and interviewed the staff who cleaned the room, we dug through the trash to verify the drinks the victim claimed to have drank, we got camera footage from the gas station where he bought alcohol (she was also underage). There's a ton more that was done to verify key facts, most of which were essentially meaningless, but we did them because we are required to. Now, imagine if a victim tells you a story that includes 10 things that could be independently verified (through searching a location for CCTV, pulling receipts, whatever) and you only look for 7 of those things. This opens up the defense to make an argument that you intentionally skipped looking for those other 3 things because they were exculpatory. It's impossible to think through all the different details that could be verified, along with their probative value to a case, and organizing them by how long you have until the evidence is no longer available (there's no standard timeframe for how long before a given store's CCTV recycles). I'm not saying investigators shouldn't do this ground work, but I am saying that it's a shitload to ask of them and potentially opens up the prosecution to a very bad-faith defensive argument that certain seemingly-obvious factors weren't considered during evidence collection. In your murder example, sure, they could say "looks kinda like the same guy ish" and hope that's good enough for a jury, but the defense can (and should) tear that to shreds. If a subject told us they were at the cinema at the time of a murder, my first thought would be to ask them to provide any evidence they themselves have (social media check-in, location data from their phone, receipts/credit card statement, etc), but I would also absolutely be checking the cinema for video evidence. If I can prove he lied, that's a huge win for the prosecution. Alternatively if he's telling the truth that he has a verifiable alibi, then the real killer is stacking up time while evidence entropies. The reality is that cops are burdened enough that the only evidence that's persistently worth verifying are usually statements made by subjects. This is where case where it's worthwhile to talk to cops: if there is potentially verifiable evidence of innocence that stands a good chance of diminishing as time goes by. Giving specific details like the place and time that you saw a movie at a theater along with any receipts or ticket stubs, would be a huge factor in preventing future law enforcement / prosecutor interactions.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      "In many cases investigators don't look very hard for evidence which makes their case fall apart." I recently witnessed a case where a trooper charged the wrong statute. How can you make a thorough investigation if you don't even know the elements of the offense because you are looking at the wrong statute? He made about 5 other mistakes too, even lying to the judge. The system doesn't care. The investigation into the lie was found to be a "just a misunderstanding" eventhough that same report also notes that the statement was false and that he made the correct version of that statement 10 minutes prior to that.
  - thathndude 6y ago
    This is largely true. Especially when it comes to knowing and understanding the system. A public defender is so comfortable in that role that it gives them a huge advantage. But we also have to recognize the reality that the PD jobs are generally low paying and tend to be sought out and filled by less qualified graduates (to the extent we equate good grades with qualifications, which is obviously a heck of a logic leap).
  - giantg2 6y ago
    "Another possibility is that the investigators fail to share evidence as required." They also don't maintain good Gugilo records. You can request that information, but they won't give it to you because they don't keep good records of the past issues, on purpose. I had a trooper contradict himself in court and official reports 3 or 4 times. The prosecution still found him to be a reliable witness. Anyone else would have their testimony thrown out. Because they don't keep good records of these contradictions, I guarantee future cases requesting this information will not get it.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    You are just as much a part of your defense as your attorney. If you have knowledge that will help your attorney, then start sharing. This also has the benefit that this info would then be familiar to the attorney for future clients.
tantalor 6y ago
Can you elaborate on "whether messages could have been deleted"?
- thrower123 6y ago
  Some of the exchanges seemed rather nonsensical, to my mind, like there were pieces missing. It's not like the default Android SMS app indicates that messages have been deleted. And there was no provenance information provided as to where or when they were collected.
  - neodymiumphish 6y ago
    This is a difficulty that comes with most law enforcement interactions with victims, now. For example, the military is required to offer an attorney to a victim before conducting an interview. Often, these attorneys jump straight to "you can't have any evidence from my victim" without a detailed description of what you're seeking. This usually means we can only get screenshots from his/her phone of conversations between victim and subject, along with any contemporaneous conversations with other witnesses. I hate this, because screenshots come out looking like trash and it's very difficult with most messaging apps to show the timestamps for all messages. Eventually, this pendulum is going to swing (when cases start getting thrown out for this lack of timestamps/evidence of deleted messages, etc) and law enforcement (at least in the military environment) will have a bit more support in pulling relevant (and only relevant) data from victim devices for the purpose of evidence collection. One additional thing about screenshots: They can be totally faked, and the "contact" can't be validated from conversation screenshots. For example, if you buy a burner phone, you can create a whole conversation as though the burner phone is the assailant, then change the contact's number to the real assailant. Some chat apps keep the whole conversation, despite the number change, in the same chat and make it impossible to tell which number sent the messages. Cellebrite indicates the number (assuming we're talking about SMS here) where the message came from, even if the contact changes.
    - tfehring 6y ago
      Military law enforcement is going to have more leeway to conduct warrantless searches of the devices of people who haven’t even been accused of a crime? On what basis? I’m skeptical, but if you’re right that’s horrifying.
thathndude 6y ago
Lawyer here. I’d hope the Defense lawyer raised a slew of objections. There are serious foundation, authenticity, and chain of custody issues here. On top of that, another way around this is under the confrontation clause. The accused has the right to question any witnesses against them. So I’d demand to cross examine the “tech” that ran the scan and make it apparent that no one knows how the box works (that’s the whole point; it’s proprietary). And then ask them simple questions like “cookies images have been placed on my clients device if no one knows how the box works?” The real advantage of these celebrite boxes, for law enforcement, that they give them leads to otherwise admissible evidence. So that’s why I’m shocked to hear that they actually tried to use information from the phone.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  And then ask them simple questions like “cookies images have been placed on my clients device if no one knows how the box works?” I'm sure the answer to that would be delicious. ;)
  - meowster 6y ago
    I imagine it was an autoincorrect of "could imagines have..."
    - dylan604 6y ago
      or even an autoincorrect of "could images have..."
      - generalizations 6y ago
        I thought it was "could these images have..."
    - salawat 6y ago
      >could imagines have... Auto-correct was a mistake. Either that or a malicious undertaking cleverly disguised in the cloak of legitimate best intentions. Could images have.

londons_explore 6y ago

You would hope that if there were other messages which said the same story differently, the defence would have brought them to court. Unfortunately, I don't have faith in all defence lawyers to do this kind of thing - some "free because you're poor" lawyers might spend only 20 minutes per case...

Waterluvian 6y ago
It's because they are overworked and underresourced. Public defenders are some of the best people our legal systems have. Another possibility is that the investigators fail to share evidence as required.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  In many cases investigators don't look very hard for evidence which makes their case fall apart. Imagine a murder case where the accused claims he was at the cinema at the time. Often the police won't go to the cinema and get CCTV tapes to back up the claim - they'll just use blurry footage from the murder scene and claim "looks kinda like the same guy ish". I suspect there are a lot of cases of innocent people in prison simply because evidence of them being innocent was deliberately overlooked or not collected.
  - speeder 6y ago
    We had a case in Brazil that was both sad and absurdly silly. A woman was found murdered in a cemetery. She was in town for a university-related festival/party, and was staying temporarily with some other students. The police suspected the other students first, and went to their house, and found out: 1. One was an RPG player, had RPG books. 2. The other was a heavy metal fan and had heavy metal-related posters. 3. The other guy was into literature and had some 'dark' literature. So conclusion of the officers: it was a satanic cult, and the woman was killed in a "RPG Satanic Ritual" The prosecutor's office at first went with it too. Later, already mid-trial, the prosecutor changed, the new prosecutor found a lot more formerly-useful now useless evidence that the police seemly deliberately ignored: 1. The police had in evidence storage some bloodied clothes that they never ran DNA tests on, the DNA was now useless (it has been years since the actual murder). Also the evidence was probably contaminated, the storage consisted of stuffing all the evidence in trash bags and leaving them in a random room in the police station. 2. People told the police multiple times, that the woman had drug debts, but they were ignored. 3. A known drug dealer was seen on the day past the murder, riding a bike around town, with his t-shirt having red stains on it, police even seen the guy themselves, and didn't bother stopping him and checking his t-shirt. The new prosecutor despite seeing all this, had hands tied and just went along with what the police wanted, and tried to prove in court that they were "satanists". The ruling was this (the judge was quite upset at it too): 1. The prosecution failed to prove they were satanists, evidence pointed out to the accused living there by coincidence, and their hobbies being "dark" or "fantasy" were coincidence too, only one of them was an RPG player, only one of them was a heavy metal fan, and so on, they didn't shared their hobbies with each other. 2. And even if they WERE satanists (they weren't), in Brazil being a satanist is not a crime. 3. For some reason the prosecution provided zero evidence that was actually related to the murder, they only tried to prove the accused were satanists and presumed this would be enough to know they were the murderers, but they never tried to link the accused with the crime scene, didn't even tried to explain when they would been at the cemetery.
    - a0-prw 6y ago
      Certainly disgraceful, but I had to laugh because it read like one of those logic puzzles https://riddles.guru/riddles/einstein-zebra-puzzle/203/ https://riddles.guru/riddles/einstein-zebra-puzzle/203/
      - bellyfullofbac 6y ago
        Off-topic, but Boy Einstein couldn't have created the puzzle like exactly described with those cigarette brands, because some of them were introduced much later in his life...
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        ok but it's not the Einstein Zebra puzzle, more like the Mo Fine Zebra puzzle (for a contemporary, albeit not peer)
  - neodymiumphish 6y ago
    To be fair, the amount of effort involved in verifying every little detail a witness/victim/subject provides is astronomical, not to mention the potential for a defense case based on the lack of effort to verify one fact when other facts were verified. In my old agency, we were required to do that type of thing. For example, we had a rape case where the rape occurred in a short-stay house (kind of like a hotel, but for families that require room for multiple kids/pets, etc). The subject only rented the house for one night, and the rape occurred in one of the bedrooms. By the time we got to the house, there had already been another guest for the night between him checking out and us arriving. We went to housekeeping and interviewed the staff who cleaned the room, we dug through the trash to verify the drinks the victim claimed to have drank, we got camera footage from the gas station where he bought alcohol (she was also underage). There's a ton more that was done to verify key facts, most of which were essentially meaningless, but we did them because we are required to. Now, imagine if a victim tells you a story that includes 10 things that could be independently verified (through searching a location for CCTV, pulling receipts, whatever) and you only look for 7 of those things. This opens up the defense to make an argument that you intentionally skipped looking for those other 3 things because they were exculpatory. It's impossible to think through all the different details that could be verified, along with their probative value to a case, and organizing them by how long you have until the evidence is no longer available (there's no standard timeframe for how long before a given store's CCTV recycles). I'm not saying investigators shouldn't do this ground work, but I am saying that it's a shitload to ask of them and potentially opens up the prosecution to a very bad-faith defensive argument that certain seemingly-obvious factors weren't considered during evidence collection. In your murder example, sure, they could say "looks kinda like the same guy ish" and hope that's good enough for a jury, but the defense can (and should) tear that to shreds. If a subject told us they were at the cinema at the time of a murder, my first thought would be to ask them to provide any evidence they themselves have (social media check-in, location data from their phone, receipts/credit card statement, etc), but I would also absolutely be checking the cinema for video evidence. If I can prove he lied, that's a huge win for the prosecution. Alternatively if he's telling the truth that he has a verifiable alibi, then the real killer is stacking up time while evidence entropies. The reality is that cops are burdened enough that the only evidence that's persistently worth verifying are usually statements made by subjects. This is where case where it's worthwhile to talk to cops: if there is potentially verifiable evidence of innocence that stands a good chance of diminishing as time goes by. Giving specific details like the place and time that you saw a movie at a theater along with any receipts or ticket stubs, would be a huge factor in preventing future law enforcement / prosecutor interactions.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    "In many cases investigators don't look very hard for evidence which makes their case fall apart." I recently witnessed a case where a trooper charged the wrong statute. How can you make a thorough investigation if you don't even know the elements of the offense because you are looking at the wrong statute? He made about 5 other mistakes too, even lying to the judge. The system doesn't care. The investigation into the lie was found to be a "just a misunderstanding" eventhough that same report also notes that the statement was false and that he made the correct version of that statement 10 minutes prior to that.
- thathndude 6y ago
  This is largely true. Especially when it comes to knowing and understanding the system. A public defender is so comfortable in that role that it gives them a huge advantage. But we also have to recognize the reality that the PD jobs are generally low paying and tend to be sought out and filled by less qualified graduates (to the extent we equate good grades with qualifications, which is obviously a heck of a logic leap).
- giantg2 6y ago
  "Another possibility is that the investigators fail to share evidence as required." They also don't maintain good Gugilo records. You can request that information, but they won't give it to you because they don't keep good records of the past issues, on purpose. I had a trooper contradict himself in court and official reports 3 or 4 times. The prosecution still found him to be a reliable witness. Anyone else would have their testimony thrown out. Because they don't keep good records of these contradictions, I guarantee future cases requesting this information will not get it.
- dylan604 6y ago
  You are just as much a part of your defense as your attorney. If you have knowledge that will help your attorney, then start sharing. This also has the benefit that this info would then be familiar to the attorney for future clients.

tantalor 6y ago

Can you elaborate on "whether messages could have been deleted"?

thrower123 6y ago
Some of the exchanges seemed rather nonsensical, to my mind, like there were pieces missing. It's not like the default Android SMS app indicates that messages have been deleted. And there was no provenance information provided as to where or when they were collected.
- neodymiumphish 6y ago
  This is a difficulty that comes with most law enforcement interactions with victims, now. For example, the military is required to offer an attorney to a victim before conducting an interview. Often, these attorneys jump straight to "you can't have any evidence from my victim" without a detailed description of what you're seeking. This usually means we can only get screenshots from his/her phone of conversations between victim and subject, along with any contemporaneous conversations with other witnesses. I hate this, because screenshots come out looking like trash and it's very difficult with most messaging apps to show the timestamps for all messages. Eventually, this pendulum is going to swing (when cases start getting thrown out for this lack of timestamps/evidence of deleted messages, etc) and law enforcement (at least in the military environment) will have a bit more support in pulling relevant (and only relevant) data from victim devices for the purpose of evidence collection. One additional thing about screenshots: They can be totally faked, and the "contact" can't be validated from conversation screenshots. For example, if you buy a burner phone, you can create a whole conversation as though the burner phone is the assailant, then change the contact's number to the real assailant. Some chat apps keep the whole conversation, despite the number change, in the same chat and make it impossible to tell which number sent the messages. Cellebrite indicates the number (assuming we're talking about SMS here) where the message came from, even if the contact changes.
  - tfehring 6y ago
    Military law enforcement is going to have more leeway to conduct warrantless searches of the devices of people who haven’t even been accused of a crime? On what basis? I’m skeptical, but if you’re right that’s horrifying.

thathndude 6y ago

Lawyer here. I’d hope the Defense lawyer raised a slew of objections. There are serious foundation, authenticity, and chain of custody issues here. On top of that, another way around this is under the confrontation clause. The accused has the right to question any witnesses against them. So I’d demand to cross examine the “tech” that ran the scan and make it apparent that no one knows how the box works (that’s the whole point; it’s proprietary). And then ask them simple questions like “cookies images have been placed on my clients device if no one knows how the box works?” The real advantage of these celebrite boxes, for law enforcement, that they give them leads to otherwise admissible evidence. So that’s why I’m shocked to hear that they actually tried to use information from the phone.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
And then ask them simple questions like “cookies images have been placed on my clients device if no one knows how the box works?” I'm sure the answer to that would be delicious. ;)
- meowster 6y ago
  I imagine it was an autoincorrect of "could imagines have..."
  - dylan604 6y ago
    or even an autoincorrect of "could images have..."
    - generalizations 6y ago
      I thought it was "could these images have..."
  - salawat 6y ago
    >could imagines have... Auto-correct was a mistake. Either that or a malicious undertaking cleverly disguised in the cloak of legitimate best intentions. Could images have.