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Murder Trial May Turn On Missing Router
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."
This trial is in Raleigh, NC, not Charlotte, NC. Fact check much, people?
How do you turn on a missing router? WOL?
wear something sexy.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Is the router running ReiserFS?!
Murder Trial May Turn On Missing Router
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)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
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.