Murder Trial May Turn On Missing Router 214
bgood writes "The outcome of a murder trial taking place in Charlotte, NC, may turn on a missing router. State prosecutors believe that Brad Cooper may have used the router (never recovered by investigators) to make it appear his wife made a phone call from the house the day she disappeared. The trial is in its 8th week."
Story Error (Score:5, Informative)
This trial is in Raleigh, NC, not Charlotte, NC. Fact check much, people?
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News from the North is always more interesting. It's like a rule or something, so that's probably why.
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News from the North is always more interesting. It's like a rule or something, so that's probably why.
Unless you're South of DC, then it's usually all just drivel.
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Where? I heard everything East of Palm Springs and North of Santa Clarita was destroyed in Y2K.
Re:Story Error (Score:4, Funny)
Oh ok.
Wait.. wait a minute .. You're saying there is life outside of the greater Los Angeles / San Diego area? We were told everyone was dead. Everyone. We were told anything on TV that we saw about the outside world was a dramatization. That whole thing in New York? New Orleans? Haiti? Indonesia? Japan? The hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes? The giant comet coming in 2012? That's all real?
Next you're going to tell me the yellow cap we've had on the sky isn't really to protect us from the radiation. Don't tell me it's pollution or something. I don't think we can take any more news like that all at once.
What about the survivors who left Los Angeles to explore to the East? They never came back. We assumed they died in the barren wasteland. Does that mean we can all leave? We can rejoin the world?
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If you hate Slashdot so much, leave. No one is forcing you to read your news or to post here.
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Well, then I look forward to you never posting again, as you seem to think Slashdot sucks so much, there is no reason for you to be here.
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This trial is in Raleigh, NC, not Charlotte, NC. Fact check much, people?
Are you sure? Maybe they are using a router to just make it look like its in Raleigh....
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Clearly the story was bounced through a router in Charlotte...
Reasonable Doubt (Score:3)
Sounds like some iron-clad conjecture.
He'll fry.
A duck! (Score:3)
Is the jury gonna believe the Upstanding Officers Of The Law or the Lying Perpetrator? Prejudice and procedure trump the facts, in most cases.
Aside from that, the husband/boyfriend is almost always factually guilty, so the Police start from there and don't try too hard to look anywhere else.
VOIP? Router? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cary police investigators have theorized that Brad Cooper, an engineer in Voice over Internet Protocol, had the expertise and ability to use the router to stage a remote call from his home phone to his cellphone so that it appeared that Nancy Cooper, 34, was alive on the morning that she disappeared
That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.
Re:VOIP? Router? (Score:5, Informative)
Complex? Impersonating the home line is actually a FEATURE sold with many of these services so you can call from lets say, your cell phone but have the call appear to come from your home. It often also works like a calling card does, making the cell call a local call. It is trivial to do.
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I didn't mean technologically complex, but logistically complex. Why misappropriate hardware from your employer, when you probably already have the hardware you need in a box in the attic?
OJ is hot on the trail buddy! (Score:2)
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Do the felons get to play golf in Lovelock? I know they only have two laws in Nevada, but last I heard they still enforced the hell out of them.
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ANI will show exactly what device called what device no matter what the caller id said.
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True, but a cheep router is handy for it because you can use it then toss it in the dump. There are many out there that are relatively cheep and can be modded with custom firmware.
Set a router up with the right firmware, configuration, and connections and I can easily see a VoIP engineer using it for that general purpose, then tossing it in a dumpster never to be seen again.
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True, but a cheep router is handy for it because you can use it then toss it in the dump. There are many out there that are relatively cheep and can be modded with custom firmware.
Set a router up with the right firmware, configuration, and connections and I can easily see a VoIP engineer using it for that general purpose, then tossing it in a dumpster never to be seen again.
Cheap? FTA it was a Cisco 3825S router which runs about $4k refurbished.
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Seems all the more strange that such an expensive router would go missing. If I had some rackmount hardware that cost 4k, I can pretty much guarantee that I'd always know where it is.
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It was cheap in that he borrowed it from work, and it was never seen again.
That's circumstantial though. It could have been borrowed from his desk by someone else, who installed it somewhere to be found in about a decade. :) Retail value of $4k at Cisco is nothing in comparison to most of their product lines.
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That was my implication. He may not have been the one who used it, but may not have any knowledge or recollection of where it went.
I'm not going to re-read the article, but did they fix the time of death to before the phone call was made? Do they have evidence showing that his cell was not located at the house? There are plenty of explanations beyond the easy ones. He may have been there, killed her, dropped his phone somewhere in the house, and called it to find it.
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True, but a cheep router is handy for it because you can use it then toss it in the dump. There are many out there that are relatively cheep and can be modded with custom firmware.
Set a router up with the right firmware, configuration, and connections and I can easily see a VoIP engineer using it for that general purpose, then tossing it in a dumpster never to be seen again.
It was a Cisco 3825S - which retails for a couple thousand dollars.
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Still cheaper than a divorce. Just sayin'.
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True, but at the same time if their best piece of evidence is that he could have done it because he had the know-how, then god help anyone who is a VoIP engineer,
From what I read, it's the other way around. *His* best piece of evidence that he *didn't* kill her is that his wife called him from home when the prosecution alleges she was already dead, which suddenly makes his VoIP experience very relevant. It is Columbo-esqe however, in that the accused has apparently tried to play the "I'm smarter than you,
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The problem with most of these cases is the guy thinks he is sooo very much smarter than the police and prosecutor. So he gets a little cocky and mouths off to the wrong people. Or, decides that he knows how to manage his defense better than his lawyer, who just goes along with his cocky arrogant client.
First rule of crime is you are never smarter than the police, just luckier. They have rotten luck and the odds are usually against them. Which can be countered quickly by the prosecutor that is on top of
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From the little detail in the article the question at hand is the time of death of his wife.
Apparently there was a phone call made from their home to the man's mobile, presumably from the wife, proving that she was alive at that time, and about to leave home for her normal morning jogging. The prosecution obviously believes the woman was dead already at that time, and they think the call was staged by the man.
So it's not the thing they prosecute on, on the contrary even: they appear to try to find a way t
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A Cisco 3825 is not a cheap router. It is also complex, large, and heavy (2U rackmount.)
And he borrowed it from the office. It would be dumb to use it for that purpose (not that it excludes the possibility.)
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True, but a cheep router is handy for it because you can use it then toss it in the dump. There are many out there that are relatively cheep and can be modded with custom firmware.
Set a router up with the right firmware, configuration, and connections and I can easily see a VoIP engineer using it for that general purpose, then tossing it in a dumpster never to be seen again.
Except you don't need a special router for this.
Voip/Sip is just not that hard.
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Cary police investigators have theorized that Brad Cooper, an engineer in Voice over Internet Protocol, had the expertise and ability to use the router to stage a remote call from his home phone to his cellphone so that it appeared that Nancy Cooper, 34, was alive on the morning that she disappeared
That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.
The router in question is a Cisco 3825S, which he apparently borrowed from work.
If the guy worked at Cisco, in VoIP, I have absolutely no doubt that he could actually do what they claim. I could probably manage it myself if I had the right hardware and spent some time looking through documentation.
But it seems kind of silly to borrow a relatively expensive router from work to fake a call to try to prove your innocence...
Like you, I'm thinking he could probably accomplish this in a much simpler manner. Get
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It seems to me that if he was thinking ahead enough to borrow that router from work to cover his ass, you'd think he might realize that there'd be a paper trail involved in borrowing that router, and that his ass wouldn't be so nicely covered.
You would think that, but sometimes very technically smart people are dumb about murder, especially with regards to what makes them look guilty in court.
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Occam's razor.
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Why does everyone say router router router?
Well, the summary mentions a router because the article mentions a router because the court case involved a router because the guy worked for Cisco and borrowed a router from work but that router has now gone missing...
Wtf happened to setting up a regular run of the mill telephone modem and calling task manager. Wow guys does it really need to cost $200 to pull this off? I bet most of you have access to an old analog modem or two, and a computer. Fresh install Win XP have the thing place the call, that night slick it, or install a new drive, lose the modem. Why a router?
Or just a regular dial-up modem, a Linux box, and a shell script...
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That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.
A real VOIP engineer would falsify the SS7 logs. Why F around with hardware?
Or if you want to F around with hardware, get a surplus security dialer and a simple timer...
He might be a "VOIP engineer" in that he pulls cable and the employer doesn't want to pay him overtime, so he's now an "engineer". Or he might be a real switch engineer. I don't know.
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A real VOIP engineer would have rented a cheap SIP line from the Ukraine and fired off forged packets with his wife's caller ID.
Or he could have used a trusty old USR Sportster plugged into the landline. You know, like we did in the 80s and 90s.
I'd say the big problem with techies murdering their wives is they fail to plan for the social ramifications. Sure, you can launch the body into outer space, never to be recovered, but how solid is your alibi story ? Do you have the acting chops to lie right to he
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Cary police investigators have theorized that Brad Cooper, an engineer in Voice over Internet Protocol, had the expertise and ability to use the router to stage a remote call from his home phone to his cellphone so that it appeared that Nancy Cooper, 34, was alive on the morning that she disappeared
That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.
I too don't understand what is so special about this router.
Well he probably had his own router at home anyway. There is nothing special about VOIP or SIP phones that require anything beyond what is available in your average user grade home router. Even for simulating a call from a remote location; opening a simple inbound SSH port would allow you to make an outgoing call by launching a soft-phone clients on a computer in the house.
On the other hand, the prosecution seem to be arguing crime of passion in t
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It's possible he's guilty, if so a loss to VOIP, our best bet for free anonymous communications.
But maybe he's being penalized for his specialized skills. This is why the stupid
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Using a program that can talk to your modem, send the command "ATDT 555-1234" (or whatever number).
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Using a program that can talk to your modem, send the command "ATDT 555-1234" (or whatever number).
Ahhh, the nostalgia of the AT command set. The simple joys of writing custom mode init strings into your .bat files. The pleasure of automating downloads of bbs forum posts with Telix.
Seriously, anybody over thirty could do this in their sleep, if they owned a computer in the late 80s or 90s.
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> Seriously, anybody over thirty could do this in their sleep, if they owned a computer in the late 80s or 90s.
-nod- A quick command to make you seem a bit like a secret agent to anybody still on dialup:
AT M1 L3 S11=30 DT ###-####
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"Seriously, anybody over thirty could do this in their sleep, if they owned a computer in the late 80s or 90s."
Only if I printed out a reference card. I didn't MEMORIZE this stuff! Any programmer over thirty could probably do it in his sleep, but us regular people not so much.
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Um, ATDT is kind of the most basic modem command in the book...
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Ah, but did you do those things with a gooey interface in visual basic? If not, you're not a true uberhacker.
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There are still people alive today to remember that quote ? I thought I was the only one who had escaped suicide after paying to see Antitrust.
Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Is the router running ReiserFS?!
ReiserFS (Score:2)
the file system of choice for murdering psychopaths everywhere
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But is it merely correlative or is it actually causative, and if so, which is the cause and which is the effect? More data points are needed...
interesting theory (Score:2)
you are saying simply using the file system causes one to become a murdering psychopath?
let me look at the warning label...
body odor due to infrequent bathing, involuntary celibacy, paleness due to lack of sun exposure...
nope, nothing about murder
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I can see someone being driven to murder the first time they lose a file system to Reiser (this used to happen, but I believe it has been fixed...)
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That joke killed!
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
If the router is missing, how will you know whether it is actually turned on or if it's still off? Or are they implying that the antanae will be raised? (giggity)
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how will you know whether it is actually turned on or if it's still off?
It's a Schrodinger 9200 model, of course.
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If the router is missing, how will you know whether it is actually turned on or if it's still off? Or are they implying that the antanae will be raised? (giggity)
Apparently this isn't the first time something like this has happened: [bash.org]
<BradCoop> hm. I've lost my router.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my incriminating evidence stash it is.
Next thing you know they'll be questioning if everything was well at home, and the frequency that he put on his robe and wizard hat... [bash.org]
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no actually its the court case that will be turning
i see 3 possible outcomes
1 they never find the router (or it takes to much time)
case fails
2 they find the router and it does not show what they need it to (and does not look like it has been reflashed/wiped/ect)
case fails
3 they find the router and it does show the evidence needed
case JAILS
In other news: (Score:2)
"Murder Trial May Turn Off Missing Router."
Depends on context (Score:3)
This is really long stretch and will require recording of actual call and other details. You can fake voice message, but faking actual call is very difficult, never mind Hollywood showing simple voice changers as hot cakes available for everyone. Interesting legal theory though. As usual, needs facts and sound arguments why they are binding together.
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They aren't saying the call was faked (as in a false entry of the call was placed in the teleco logs), they are saying that a real call occurred but it was not made by his wife, but by an automated agent, making it seem like his wife was alive after a time when he was already seen to be at work and therefore not a candidate for the crime.
Charlotte? (Score:3)
Trial is taking place in Raleigh. Not anywhere close to Charlotte. Although I'm sure some non-NC people think that Charlotte is the only city in NC.
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I'm sure some non-NC people think that Charlotte is the only city in NC.
You're assuming that most non-NC people think about NC enough to get the geography wrong, where the truth is we can't be bothered even that much.
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There are states other than California?
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You mean Florida has cities outside of Orlando? Nevada has cities outside of Las Vegas? New York has cities outside of New York City? Michigan has cities outside of Detroit?
It happens with most states, with the possible exception of California (because it has several well known cities).
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Noumea (Score:2)
is the only city I can think of in New Caledonia
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Any other evidence? (Score:3)
So a guy has some experience, someone from years ago has a missing router, and we jump to "Aha! He stole a router and killed his wife." TFA doesn't say if there is any other evidence. A witness (who did tell different stories) said she saw the wife at the supposed time the husband was murdering the wife. They better have some better evidence than conjecture, because I don't want to get blamed for some crime just because I have an engineering degree and some guy I used to know stole a router and then covered it up by saying I stole it. Where is CSI when you need them? They can do magicky stuff!
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I'm a network engineer as well, and uh, even if they find the router, unless it's logging itself to flash, they won't find any evidence. Maybe if it's configured for voip that's some pretty pressing evidence.
I suspect they're hoping it'll have a custom firmware that prints out "click here to call your cell phone and make it look like your wife's still alive" when it boots.
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What's next?? (Score:2)
Next thing you'll know they'll claim an IP address doesn't correspond to a person or something.
Heh.
CSI Solution: (Score:2)
They should build a GUI Visual Basic interface to track the ip to find the router...
ALL kinds of "evidence" BUT... (Score:5, Interesting)
I could spit to the courthouse from here, and these are only a fraction of all the twisted facts:
All kinds of things SUGGESTING he did it, BUT-
This trial is ALL over the place from the prosecution...They have argued he both did it in a fit of rage, and that he premeditated it (such as acquiring the router)
The router is the Prosecution's response for his "alibi"- She was still alive that morning and called him from home while he was at the store before she went jogging.
Computer showed Google Map searches from his computer showing where the body was found before the authorities found the body
BUT- The Defense has offered that the time stamps are an invalid format. However, the Judge would not allow the jury to hear the testimony of the defense witness for this fact.
They said the victim was murdered after returning from a neighborhood party where she had been drinking quite a bit.
BUT-Defense says then her BAC would have still been elevated, which it was not.
He is missing a pair of shoes that he was video taped wearing after she disappeared.
A diamond necklace that witnesses testified she never took off was found in the house, suggesting he killed her then removed the valuable item. BUT-Store tape from two days before shows she was not wearing it then.
A set of supposedly really expensive decorative ducks were missing. The prosecution contended they were broken in a struggle in the house. BUT-Mother of the accused had them somewhere else.
Wife was divorcing the husband who was cheating on her and going to move back to Canada with the kids. BUT-She had had affairs as well and potential divorce proceedings could have outed someone else who wanted to keep things quiet.
The husband bought a tarp the day before- BUT the wife was expected the next morning to help paint a friend's house.
An exterminator says when he was in the garage, there was clutter everywhere, and no room to pull a vehicle into the garage. BUT-Police found a cleared space in the garage where a vehicle may have been pulled in to load a body.
What's crazy about all this the Prosection has gotten away with "It COULD be this, but it COULD be that"
I honestly feel this will hinge on the Judge not allowing the testimony for the defense that the Google Searches are suspect as well. I will contend that looks really bad if you are then not told something doesn't seem right about the dates.
Re:ALL kinds of "evidence" BUT... (Score:5, Informative)
I did a quick read of the case coverage over at WRAL and it does appear pretty darned sketchy for the state. In addition to denying the testimony about the invalid timestamps because the prosecution wouldn't have time to prepare a rebuttal, the reason for the late witness was apparently the fact that the judge disallowed the first defense witness as "not an expert". So their argument that they wouldn't have time to rebut is a little sketchy, if that story is right. The judge apparently did allow the prosecution to present the router evidence at the very last minute in the person of Chris Fry as a rebuttal witness. So disallowing the defense rebuttal witness on the computer files (apparently lots of files had altered timestamps after being taken into police custody, not just the google maps files). There was also some stuff about the police erasing data from cell phones.
The whole thing sounds really sketchy for the prosecution. They claimed quite a few things definitively that the defense was able to absolutely prove false. It sounds like there was a pretty good PR campaign afoot to prove the guy guilty in the media as well.
Having invested less than 15 minutes in the case, I couldn't say anything useful about whether the guy killed her or not. But I can say that I'm not at all impressed with the police/prosecution/judge team in the case. There seems to be a lot of disregard for a dispassionate arbiter of justice. From what I can glean from the press reports, there's a fairly unified team of police, prosecutors, press and judge all working to ensure a conviction, with a defense team and some of the guys friends working for an acquittal.
I really didn't like the last minute inclusion of a second lesser charge of 2nd degree murder by the judge. This smacks of trying to get the jury to compromise on 2nd degree murder - a charge that would be entirely incompatible with the case the prosecution has presented (a case for premeditated murder). The jury is apparently fed up with the trial and wants to go home. So the judge offers them a way to compromise between guilty on first degree murder and acquittal - just convict on 2nd degree and you can all go home! Pretty sketchy stuff.
No Way (Score:2)
An autopsy report that she was most likely strangled is identical to a report saying that she might not have been strangled at all.
Then we have speculation about a router and how the supposed router might have been used by the suspect.
No way that any kind of guilty verdict would come from me on this case. Proof, not speculation, of the murder, the circumstances at the time of the murder, the place where the murder occurred and some
Yipe (Score:2)
If the whole case hinges on "evidence" of similar quality, the DA's office should be charged with malicious prosecution. It should also be forced to pay heavy compensation to the defendant AND the jury. It really sounds like they have no clue, so they blame the husband (always the go-to suspect in a murder). They have multiple witnesses and a phone record showing her alive after her husband allegedly killed her. Occam suggests that she was in fact alive at that time. The DA seems to prefer the theory that a
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How do you turn on a missing router? WOL?
wear something sexy.
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I think you'd still have to find it first, unless it got that Peeping Tom firmware update.
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s/turn/hinge/ and it will make more sense. English being my (close) second language, it took me a moment to parse as well.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Interesting)
I sat on a jury years ago. It was a bank robbery case and so it was in federal court. The FBI were involved but they had really screwed the pooch by basically being lazy and doing a crappy job. But the primary thing I remember is that they brought up surveillance video from the bank at some point. I don't remember how it came up but at some point it did, and the prosecution couldn't find the tapes.
At that point the judge told us, the jury, that if the tape couldn't be found we would need to assume that it contained information that helped the defendant. He said it was due to some prior case and missing evidence. In this specific case they did end up finding the video but it didn't help determine anything either way. Due to the FBI's failure to follow through on some simple stuff it ended up a hung jury.
At the time though, I felt comforted knowing that prosecution couldn't destroy or hide evidence and then use it against someone - but rather that lost evidence had to be presumed to help the defendant. Apparently that's not the case here, but it's really messed up as you say, if this guy goes to prison based on something that they don't even have.
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What you are referring to is called an "adverse inference" [wikipedia.org] in legal circles.
It isn't handed out at the drop of the hat and usually indicates the mood of the judge. An adverse inference in your favor (say when videos go "missing") mean it is time to work on your dismissal motion. An adverse inference against you means you should start drafting your appeal...
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He doesn't have to prove he is innocent. They have to prove he is guilty.
If all they have is that he faked a call from his wife, in my mind that doesn't prove anything.
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If all they have is that he faked a call from his wife, in my mind that doesn't prove anything.
At the very least it proves that he already knew she was missing and knew he'd be a suspect.
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Sorry, that's NOT their whole case, NOR is it his whole defense.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2122820&cid=36012748 [slashdot.org]
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They probably figured it reads Slashdot.
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Raleigh NC prosecutor = stagnated you mean? Slashdot didn't pull this story out of their ass, it came from the prosecutor.
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You are assuming a cell phone originated this call. From the story, that is not in evidence.
He was a Voip engineer. Don't you suppose he was running VOIP phones in his whole house?
These are cheap, calls are cheaper than cell, and records may or may not be available anywhere that contain
an exact indication of which handset (or computer based softphone) was used to place the call.