Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: August 10, 2014

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REAL LIFE NEWS: PHONE CHARGE HELPS CONVICT MURDERER

by Hazed

You probably know that your phone can be used to convict you of crimes. The record of who you called can be used as evidence, and the phone company’s records of which cell towers your phone “pinged” can place you at the scene of a crime. But this is a first: a phone charging log has helped to convict a murderer.

The case happened in Australia. Gerard Baden-Clay was charged with the murder of his wife after she disappeared one night and her body was found 11 days later. He claimed he was in bed asleep on the night she vanished and that she had been suffering from depression. There was no evidence to show he’d been at the crime scene, so it looked like there wasn’t enough to convict him.

Prospectors managed to expand on the evidence (or lack of it) by looking at the suspect’s phone’s metadata. Not at the call log, but at the records of when his phone was connected to a charger – which it was, early in the morning of the night of the murder. This showed he was not, as he claimed, asleep all night. The prosecution argued that instead he’d been out trying to hide his wife’s body, and on his return he’d plugged in his phone to charge up.

This was enough to tip the evidence against him, and a jury unanimously found him guilty of murder. He’s been sentenced to life.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/16/phone_charging_log_helps_to_convict_murderer/

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