Court Orders Retrial In Google Maps-Related Murder Case 152
netbuzz writes "Ruling that a judge erred in blocking two computer security experts from testifying that an incriminating Google Maps search record found on the defendant's laptop was planted there, a North Carolina appeals court has ordered a new trial for ex-Cisco employee Bradley Cooper, convicted two years ago in the 2008 strangulation death of his wife Nancy. 'The sole physical evidence linking Defendant to Ms. Cooper's murder was the alleged Google Map search, conducted on Defendant's laptop, of the exact area where Ms. Cooper's body was discovered,' wrote the appeals court. 'We hold ... that erroneously preventing Defendant from presenting expert testimony, challenging arguably the strongest piece of the State's evidence, constituted reversible error and requires a new trial.'"
This shouldn't be news (Score:1, Insightful)
Judge makes reversible error. Case overturned on appeal. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
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The next headline: Man convicted of murder because he used cellphone to arrange to meet up with his ex-girlfriend, who he hired to kill someone else.
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
Judge makes reversible error. Case overturned on appeal. Nothing to see here. Move along.
If it were you who was locked up in prison for the rest of your life
for a crime you did not commit and there was evidence of a technical
nature that the ( obviously stupid ) judge refused to allow, you'd be thinking
a lot differently, buddy.
I think it IS newsworthy for two reasons : first, it shows yet another example of how utterly
fucked the adversarial legal system in the US really is. The goal of this fucked
up legal system is to "win", not to find the truth, and the assholes who prosecuted
this case ought to be disbarred for their enthusiasm toward suppressing crucial evidence.
Second, the news has a technical aspect because the "evidence" of the Google Maps
search may have been planted on the machine Cooper supposedly used. If such
details as info stored in a browser cache can be the point on which a man's freedom
hinges, this is technical news of importance.
- Z
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What's fucked up is that you can be so clearly and utterly clueless - yet still get modded insightful. The prosecutors didn't suppress evidence - the judge ruled t
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:4, Insightful)
Pointing out where the defense screwed up is the prosecutors job, and vice versa.
Which is why he thinks the system is fucked up, because who the hell cares about the fucking truth when everyone spends their time crying foul for a chance at the free throw.
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Informative)
The prosecutors didn't suppress evidence - the judge ruled that experts couldn't testify. And that's his bloody job.
The judge is elected by and paid by taxpayers [ncbar.org]. The majority of those taxpayers will never be privy to the inner workings of the trial, whether by chance or by intent to remain ignorant of local trial proceedings. However, the judge's opponent in the next round of elections will take any opportunity (s)he can to paint the incumbent as incompetent or lenient on criminals, which might be enough to sway the election. Do the math before you rush to such quick judgement.
I also suggest you take a few minutes to review this information [wordpress.com].
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the judge is supposed to be a biased advocate for the defense. Why shouldn't the judge be lenient on criminals? People make mistakes, and the judge is supposed to determine appropriate punitive measures. Unremorseful violent serial rapist? 9 years in jail. Troubled college teen that let his emotions get out of hand at a party and did something he regrets? 6 months and he can live with his conscience. That's how it's supposed to be.
There are no criminals in court. Right now there are absolutely no criminals in trial; there are some in appeals, and that might not even hold water. You are presumably innocent until proven to the judgment of the court that you are guilty; the job of the judge is to make the prosecution sweat its ass and prove to the satisfaction of the court that the defendant is guilty. When the defense raises a point that debases the prosecution's case, the judge should be baring down on the prosecution to explain this shit in some way that makes actual sense or get the fuck out of his court with this bullshit railroad garbage. When the prosecution puts the defense in a bad spot, the judge should be waiting for an explanation from the defense--and if the defense can't render anything good enough, then oh well, I guess that means we have to accept what the prosecution is telling us.
The whole idea that judges are supposed to send people to jail is ludicrous. It's like people think if you get arrested and wind up in court you're guilty and going to jail. Do we have a Cardassian court system now?
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Wrong. The judge is supposed to be an unbiased advocate of the law. His or her job is to conduct the trial and ensure that the rights of both the defendant and the People are protected. In practice of course few judges are totally unbiased, but that's how it is supposed to work. The presumption of innocence is just what it sounds like. It has nothing to do with the judge having a bias, and a judge is certainly not an advocate for the defendant.
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact remains that the prosecution is there to convince the judge to place a person in jail for violation of the law. The judge is supposed to presume that person is innocent; therefor it is squarely the burden of the prosecution to prove guilt. This is called "Burden of Proof" and thus the judge should be placing a burden on the prosecution.
As the judge should be willfully placing a burden on one party to prove a fact and accepting from another party to only demonstrate that the prosecution hasn't provided sufficient proof of that fact--and specifically, not to show that the declaration of guilt made by the prosecution is actually wrong--this entire process is by nature biased toward the defense. The judge should be maintaining that bias, forcing the prosecution to squarely shoulder their own damn burden, and supporting the defense where reasonable even when it bends or breaks the technical rules of the court. Discovery rules, for example, are there so that you can't blind-side the other lawyer; but if the other lawyer is reasonably prepared for a type of evidence that is being replaced (expert witnesses) or can reasonably examine the evidence in a reasonable amount of time that the court can offer them during adjournment, then it is appropriate to allow introduction of new evidence that may prove catastrophic to the prosecution's case, as the prosecution should not be allowed to prove guilt based on a fantasy that has no grounding in the real world. This happens all the time.
It really is supposed to work that way. Look at the Zimmerman trial and you see a judge who needs to be executed for treason--the judge in that case put the defense in the hot seat and coddled the prosecution, which was completely and totally inappropriate. You are not guilty until you've shown your innocence.
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you see a judge who needs to be executed for treason
Another perfect example of people not understanding things about the legal system...
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Wrong. The judge is supposed to be an unbiased advocate of the law. His or her job is to conduct the trial and ensure that the rights of both the defendant and the People are protected. In practice of course few judges are totally unbiased, but that's how it is supposed to work. The presumption of innocence is just what it sounds like. It has nothing to do with the judge having a bias, and a judge is certainly not an advocate for the defendant.
This is the case in the American, and generally the UK and, therefore, Commonwealth legal systems. In Judaic law, the judge was on the side of the defense. There are also some countries that have a similar system.
There are also countries where the prosecution and the defense are assigned by the courts, the idea being that justice is served rather than one experiencing the best legal system that money can buy.
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I believe the judge is supposed to be a biased advocate for the defense.
That's an interesting belief, but it's certainly not a judge's role in the US to be an advocate for any party before it. Counsel are the advocates, and the judge plays referee. It's not a judge's role to make either advocate's more or less difficult.
You might agree with it, you might not. But the idea is basically that vigorous advocacy in a purportedly impartial venue will result in the greatest amount of justice. Removing a judge's partiality and replacing it with intentional bias, as you suggest, would
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
What's fucked up is that you can be so clearly and utterly clueless - yet still get modded insightful. The prosecutors didn't suppress evidence - the judge ruled that experts couldn't testify. And that's his bloody job. And reading TFA, I can't say that I think he's entirely in the wrong - because the defense screwed the pooch in the first place. (By not getting a properly qualified expert in the first place, and then by potentially violating the rules of evidence.) Pointing out where the defense screwed up is the prosecutors job, and vice versa.
Now you're getting into the technicalities that are some of what makes the system fucked, so you're really making the his case. No, technically, the prosecutors didn't suppress the evidence, they filed motions to the judge asking him to suppress the evidence. The point here is that the prosecutors did initiate it. That's what's fucked up about the system. The prosecutor's job should be to find the truth, the problem is that finding the truth and justice is not their job, the job is to win and to hell with truth or justice, exactly the point the parent was trying to make.
So they decided the first expert wasn't qualified enough, fine, let's assume they're right, but then if the point of the system is to find the truth and not just to win, then why should they be able to prevent the defendant from finding a different person that the judge can agree is an expert? The point of disallowing a last-minute switch is so that the prosecution has time to check the facts. In this case, they already knew the defendant was going to bring in an expert witness, and what the expert was going to testify to, it shouldn't matter if there was a last-minute switch up, they already had time to check the facts, all they should need is enough time to verify the expert's qualifications.
On another note, the prosecutors also tried to prevent the defense from attempting to examine test data replicating the Google Maps search that was created by investigators by claiming national security! Now that really does sound like they were suppressing (or strong-arming the judge to suppress) potentially exculpatory evidence. Through each of these things, it is clear that the prosecutor is neither serving the public nor justice, their only goal is to win, and that is evidence that the system is totally fucked. If the system were not fucked, then the prosecutors would be disbarred for this.
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That sounds completely like a load of hooey. What would local prosecutors be doing with such detailed research? This completely skips the issue that they get to present such detailed info without the defense getting to examine how they determined its detailed value.
If I were the judge, at a minimum now, I
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And reading TFA, I can't say that I think he's entirely in the wrong - because the defense screwed the pooch in the first place. (By not getting a properly qualified expert in the first place, and then by potentially violating the rules of evidence.)
Great, you made me read TFA. Here's what it says: the judge wrongly disqualified an expert witness, and then banned testimony from "properly accredited" ones. Not sure what "rules of evidence" got jeopardised, but sounds like the judge was in on it with the prosecution, which happens rather frequently because they work for the same institution, sort of.
"It happened on a computer" isn't enough to make it newsworthy anymore
It is while majority of judges (and jurors) see a computer as a magical black box with supernatural powers. The ship will sail when the first 4chan generatio
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:4, Funny)
Just get me a brightly coloured, oversized van.
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Also important is these are expert witnesses who are testifying that the evidence was planted. They're computer hackers... now, you can make evidence look planted, or evidence look not-planted, on a computer. There's no real way to tell--people like to talk about position on drives or other IO subsystem statistical analysis to show that data "isn't physically where it goes" (it's on the wrong spot on the platter!!!), but that's all as hokey as arson myths passed as science used to execute people for murde [wikipedia.org]
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I don't know about you but I find it terrifying that people can go to jail for things they didn't do, even if they do eventually get an appeal and prove themselves innocent. Between judges making errors and jurors being prejudiced morons it seems like justice is pretty hit and miss.
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Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:5, Insightful)
More people in jail per kapita than Russia.
More people in jail per kapita than North Korea.
More people in jail per kapita than Cuba.
Komrade!
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Has it occurred to you that a "criminal" is someone the state doesn't like? Oh, I'm sorry, flowers? Those little green bushes with the funny smelling flowers, you cannot grow them. To prison with you!
Actual laws aside, the courts slanting to "tough on crime" would put more people in jail because of a poor defense against shoddy prosecution. The prosecutors construct this plausible fantasy that doesn't align with reality, but the courts won't allow you to counter it with new and extremely solid evidence
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The biggest problem is that we assume juries are perfect. If a jury returns a verdict you can't challenge it on the grounds that they made a mistake or didn't understand the evidence put to them. You can only appeal if there is new evidence of procedural problems with the trial itself.
I know people who have served on juries and most of them say that the other people there were prejudiced and made up their mind based on things other than the evidence. Occasionally this comes to light as some idiot tweets his
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It's not clear that the guy didn't commit the murder, despite the claim that the Google map search was "planted" (which I find rather odd... would someone really "plant" a file vs simply doing the search in the browser???)
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Actually, I disagree.
Perhaps you are correct in the sense that this is not "new for nerds" but it is a story which has a darker side which no one is yet talking about.
This case stems from some very crappy police work with a clear and obvious agenda. "Defense attorneys have called Cary police work 'inept' and 'dishonest,' saying investigators were concerned about the town's reputation for being a safe community and that they ignored evidence and witnesses that didn't support their theory that Brad Cooper kil
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What should be news here is that the judge is able to fix cases by refusing to allow a defense. That shouldn't just be news, it should land the judge in prison for years. But that's business as usual in the American injustice system.
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Nothing to see here. Move along
Your complete lack of empathy suggests to me you might be a sociopath. I don't mean that as an insult, just an honest evaluation.
Re:This shouldn't be news (Score:4, Funny)
gesundheit
A-FUCKING-MAZING (Score:1, Funny)
In an amazing co-inky-dink, this guy and Hans Reiser were roommates in college...
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In an amazing co-inky-dink, this guy and Hans Reiser were roommates in college...
true story?? I couldn't find anything confirming this (maybe I'm too gullible)
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It's a JOKE... I should have put [joke][/joke] tags around it. I mean seriously, Hans Reiser?
Joke...
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I thought he spent his college years in a love triangle with Vladimir Putin and Linus.
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The Zombie Hunter? Wow.
The playbook is now written (Score:5, Funny)
Next time I murder my wife, I'm going to plant obviously fake evidence on my own computer linking me to the crime.
Re:The playbook is now written (Score:5, Funny)
Next time I murder my wife
uhm... that does somewhat beg the question as to how many times you've murdered her already.
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Well. http://www.amazon.com/She-Needed-Killing-Series-ebook/dp/B00DZX38EO [amazon.com]
Re:The playbook is now written (Score:5, Funny)
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I am? I didn't know that. An atheist brought up as a Welsh methodist is really a Mormon? Where do I go to buy my magic underwear?
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They're the original Mormons.
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Actually its Pant-Y-Gwydr and its more of a restaurant than a place. It translates to "First Post"
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Or "glass underwear". Take your pick.
Re:The playbook is now written (Score:4, Informative)
uhm... that does somewhat beg the question as to how many times you've murdered her already.
No, it does not somewhat beg the question. [wikipedia.org]
That raises a new question.
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Thank you. I resisted the temptation to correct the poster's use of the English term 'beg the question'.
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Well, if you want to completely ignore common usage then technically the Ops use of 'beg the question' is indeed incorrect.
The phrase 'begs the question' is also used to mean 'begs for the question' and is widely used in modern English today. I had no problem in understanding the meaning of the OP and as such his post succeeded.
Here's a link showing the dual meaning (just showing that your assertion that it 'has a specific meaning' is also unsupported and that it doies mean what the OP intended):
http://idi [thefreedictionary.com]
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It is only correct in modern English because it has been abused and incorrectly used for so long that the improper use has become accepted.
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Yeah, there's a large number of occurrences of that in English. One that annoys me from the town where I grew up was the use of the word pacfic instead of specific - must be a mishearing malapropism kind of thing, don't know if that particular one is common across the country though. There's also a tendency to use 'of' instead of 'have' in some instances e.g. 'he could of been a contender'. This sort of thing is probably countered by better literacy, being brought up in a farming town the older generations
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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What we need more of is pro grammars
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Your right about that.
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While I happen to agree with that, from the article you linked:
Despite having "long been condemned by usage commentators as incorrect or sloppy", some authorities consider the use of "begs the question" as a way of saying "raises the question" or "evades the question" to be no longer mistaken because it has attained such wide usage.
In other words, we lost the battle - and it now does mean that.
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Sometimes people do indeed use a phrase correctly. You don't make yourself sound smart by shooting it down every time. We know from his comment that he's already murdered his wife at least once, an answer to a question that nobody would have thought to ask.
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Presumably just once. Then he remarried and v1.1 was bug-ridden. Rinse and repeat.
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Oh, c'mon, just because the lead happened to be the good-looking Bradley Cooper
"physical evidence"? (Score:2)
The sole physical evidence ... was the alleged Google Map search
One should grab that search and throw it hard against a target... see how much of a physical presence that search has.
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Does Cisco hire morons? (Score:1)
The guy is probably guilty. On the other hand, it may be so that these files where planted.
I'm just wondering how a tech-savvy Cisco guy would space out or not consider clearing the cache and temp files after planning a murder?
Does Cisco hire morons?
Don't answer that...
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You do realize Google keeps their own search history on their servers outside your browser. It's still clear-able, but there's more work involved.
(I opt out of that crap.)
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By clearable, you mean detonating a bomb in their datacenter?
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No, they have a policy of having your data in at least 3 data centers, somethings are replicated more than that.
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It should be fairly easy to tell, its not like Google doesn't log EVERY FUCKING REQUEST.
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Could it be the case that the wife planned to visit the area where her body was found, maybe for a photography hobby.
It could be just unfortunate she met her killer there and died. Not unusual for a wife to use her husbands laptop. Many couples trust each other with passwords. She might even have asked him to do the search for her.
Planting evidence doesn't have to be the alternative option and some times there are coincidences.
E.g
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21442107 [bbc.co.uk]
A man has been jailed for life for killing a 19-year-old woman more than a decade after her boyfriend was wrongly jailed for the crime.
Shahidul Ahmed strangled Rachel Manning in Milton Keynes and dumped her body at a golf course in 2000.
In 2002, Barri White was convicted of murder and his friend Keith Hyatt of perverting the course of justice. Both had their convictions quashed in 2007.
http://www.bbc [bbc.co.uk]
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If you read the fine article -- the cache contained metadata showing the search to be done from his workplace, not their home.
For those that didn't RTFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
For those that don't RTFA, here's another interesting nugget: The judge also denied the defense from showing technical evidence of a "recreation" of how this search might look if someone actually did ti on the defendant's machine:
As a sideshow, the appeal also slapped down prosecutors for waving the "national security" banner to ward off a defense attempt to examine test data replicating the Google Maps search that was created by investigators:
It was error for the trial court to shut down this line of questioning without ascertaining how, or if, national security or some other legitimate interest outweighed the probative value of this information to Defendant. On remand, the trial court must determine with a reasonable degree of specificity how national security or some other legitimate interest would be compromised by discovery of particular data or materials, and memorialize its ruling in some form allowing for informed appellate review.
I tend to have a "gut" feeling the guy killed his wife, no one else has motive and the devorce was "ugly".
BUT... The Judge in the original trile seems to have made some errors...
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I tend to have a "gut" feeling the guy killed his wife, no one else has motive and the devorce was "ugly".
No one else you or the prosecution know about has motive, is what you should have said. For all we know the wife was fucking some other woman's husband
and started making demands which led this second man to commit murder.
Stranger things have happened in this world.
To achieve a conviction, this murder case must remove ALL reasonable doubt. Since no one can say whether there might have been another person who committed the murder, I would surmise that if it can be proven the browser "evidence" was planted, th
Re:For those that didn't RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Guilty or not, I smell a frame.
National security? Really? That's the best reason they could come up with to try to stop an inquiry into how they "found" their evidence?
And this guy's supposedly clever and knowledgeable enough to fake a call from his home phone but doesn't know there's a record of his map search left on the computer?
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"every test that Agent Johnson does can affect national security and that people could be put in danger."
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It's not impossible that a) He didn't consider that they might try and check for google maps searches b) that the google map search is recorded in some way that his efforts to delete data missed or c) that the summary/article includes a minor technical error and the search was retrieved from Google's infrastructure which he had not thought to wipe.
I think the last option may be quite likely and it is possible that is where the 'security' aspect came in. If the information was retrieved from Google via a
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The problem with court in general is that the standard (at least in the UK) is the almost ephemeral 'beyond reasonable doubt'. If you are widely accepting of other possibilities then it is virtually impossible to reach that standard. Clearly based on some of the shoddy convictions we see the Jurors are willing to convict when there are considerable doubts.
Bullshit. The problem is programmers getting mixed up between the all possible doubt standard and reasonable doubt. The former is mathematically and logically nice, but is utterly impossible; a recipe for total stasis. Fortunately, it is the latter that is actually used. Think of it as if you're using a bayesian reasoner and are trying to establish whether the likelihood of guilt is over a sufficient threshold; reasonable doubt probably kicks in somewhere around the 99% level. (Civil cases are typically set
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Re:For those that didn't RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they did get the evidence via a secret government spy program it was almost certainly obtained illegally anyway. More over the idea that someone can be convicted on secret evidence that they are not allowed to see or contest is disgusting and an affront to justice.
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It can be both -- he does the murder and prosecution plants the evidence. They feel like good guys getting someone they "know" did it.
Kink Tut's murderer found... (Score:2)
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I did a search on Google Earth looking at the Valley of the Kings, so I must be guilty of many a death about 4000 years ago...
No, but if you did a search of the Valley of the Kings two days prior to your wife's body being found in an obscure tomb off the beaten path, well, maybe the cops should ask you about that...
And by the way, "Kink Tut"? Is that a drag queen or something? Sounds like your wife found out something, and you just let the Freudian slip...
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a new trial for ex-Cisco employee Bradley Cooper (Score:2)
HR BS (Score:2)
contending that his lack of specific computer forensics expertise rendered him unqualified. The trial judge accepted that objection and Ward was limited to testifying only in general terms about computer network security.
but it works when you want a H1B1
Computer "forensics" should never be admissible (Score:4, Insightful)
It just opens up a can of worms as to its authenticity. How do we know he was the one who searched for this specific spot? Even if you argue it was probably him because it was his computer the law requires it to be beyond a reasonable doubt. Probably is not the same thing as beyond a reasonable doubt. Show me this AND multiple pieces of other evidence. Preferably something that is more damming. Otherwise I'm going to have doubts. Prosecutors are malicious and I'd trust a random stranger over the prosecution in any case.
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Particularly now we know the NSA has its tentacles everywhere.
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Speaking of which, doesn't the NSA record every browser transaction? They should just go look up this, and the VOIP thing, too, in the NSA's database.
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Actually, AFAIK, NSA is usually relatively indifferent to minor things like murder. That's only interesting if someone involved is already "of interest" to the federal government. So their involvement would not increase the probability of malicious prosecution, only the probability that there would be unconstitutional attempts to keep the source of the evidence secret.
That said, NSA probably wouldn't know WHO conducted the search. Not unless he was already "of interest".
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If it's the only evidence and it's obviously fake, then that supports a fit up hypothesis.
As with the Reiser's of this world, once you've got the guy who actually did it, all sorts of forensic and circumstantial evidence pops up.
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Too many things here. And too lazy to RTFA, let alone dig even further.
TFS suggests a Google Maps search (wondering how they know that he was searching for that spot in the first place) is the strongest evidence linking him to the crime. If so, the rest is really weak!
Many crimes do not have a "smoking gun" kind of evidence. It is often a whole lot of clues, each of which may be overturned on the "beyond reasonable doubt" requirement, but the lot of them may not. And if this were used as "yet another piece
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Yeah. This is what bothers me about this case too. So the guy basically committed the perfect murder...except that he was dumb enough to perform a search of her burial site on his own fucking computer without bothering to erase at least the local evidence of said search? Hell. I'd do it from an internet cafe with TOR or from a wifi hotspot or unsecured wifi and then securely erase the entire hardrive of the OS where the search was performed. The guy was commiting murder for christ sake. It's not like he'd b
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But that everything.
Probably is "beyond a reasonable doubt." in the eyes of the law.
If your gun is used in a murder, you better be well liked in the community, look innocent, and have a super awesome alibi, because otherwise you are going to jail even if half a dozen other people have access to that gun.
The courts sent people who look guilty to death row when they can proof that they could not have done the crime. Any decently circumstantial evidence is really enough.
Hell, even DNA evidence is not any bette
Roofies (Score:2)
Bradley Cooper did it under the influence of Roofies - he doesn't remember anything now.
How this proof hold its water? (Score:3)
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Reportedly his relationship with his wife had been strained ... she may have planned to secretly meet someone else at that location (many possible reasons), gone there, and been murdered.
Certainly seems enough for reasonable doubt, especially given that sea
Brad Cooper (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm from the area and this case has been rather prominently featured on the news.
The district attorneys in this state are well known for their corruption and disregard for the rights of the accused and/or of the innocent. This trial is only taking place one county over from where Mike Nifong persued his witchhunt against the Duke Lacrosse players. In addition, the SBI has been implicated in a large scandal in which evidence was faked and mishandled.
Most people here do not believe he is guilty but rather that this is a sham case in which a misandristic government and court system automatically assumes that the husband must be the one who killed his wife.
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From a Decision Theory partitioning point of view, "assuming the husband/boyfriend did it" gets a stellar 90% success rate! :-/
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You are wrong on all counts. District Attorneys are often overzealous in their prosecutions, especially in jurisdictions where they are elected, which are many.
One of the worst offenders I can think of is Resa Vetri Fermin, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She routinely throws the book at people for minor, victimless offenses. She also once charged with attempted murder a man who was being robbed of his bicycle on the popular bike path there, by two thugs who were found to have a garage full of stolen bi
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As a last resort, once he had exhausted every other option.