Crime suspects may have a right to remain silent, but that smartphone they carryaround can telllaw enforcementan awful lot.
Internet search history, social media postsand location data can leave digital clues to a crime. But as technology evolves and becomes ever more ubiquitous, the balance between crime solving and digital privacy rights can prove tricky.
"Cell phones — once figments of science fiction — now live in most Americans’ pockets and purses," Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta H. Rush wrote in a May 2017 opinion."These devices are double-edged swords, increasing convenience at the expense of privacy."
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Rush's wordscame in theZanders v. Indianadecision that said a police officer has aright to collect cellphone location data without a warrant. In June, though, that decisionwas overruledaftera landmark ruling from the U.S.Supreme Court.
That phone is George Orwell'sBig Brother,pocket sized.
"Simply put, a smart phone is a computer and has a record of every call you make, every web search you use it for, every text, every where you go," said Von Welch,director ofIndiana University'sCenter for Applied Cybersecurity Research.
"It's a record of your digital life."
It's also a record that can be followed, a valuable tool in getting criminals off the streets.
Facebook posts putpeople in prison
Social media posts are fair game in civil and criminal cases as long as the lawyers can prove they are authentic, said Joel Schumm, professor at theIndiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.
Facebook is mentioned in more than 250 Indiana appellate court opinions. Schumm saidthat since so few cases get to an appeal, that number isa fraction of how many times Facebook posts are used as evidence.
Consider this Marion County case:
Larry Jo Thomas called himself"Slaughtaboi Larro" on Facebookand postedaphotoof himself posing with an AR-15-style assault rifle.
Marion County prosecutors used that photo and others on Facebookto help convictThomas of murdering Rito Llamas-Juarez in February 2016.
Llamas-Juarez was shot to death with AR-15-style ammunition; the photo put that kind of gun in Thomas'hands. Investigators found a distinctive bracelet near the crime scene; another Facebook photo showed Thomas wearing that bracelet.
“The combination of a witness cooperation and IMPD’s ability and diligence to follow a digital breadcrumb trail were the keys to solving this murder and assuring justice for the family of Mr. Llamas-Juarez,” Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry said after the June sentencing.
Search history unravels alibis
Child abuse deaths are among the most difficult crimes to prove, but digital evidence is changing that.
Caregivers accused of hurting a child often claimthe injurywas an accident orthey didn't know the child was hurtor sick.
Increasingly, Google search history points to the truth,saidRyan Mears, the Marion County prosecutor's chief trial deputy.
"We find they are Googling and looking into the very issue the child was suffering from," Mears said.
In Morgan County, prosecutors said Steven Ingalls Jr.'s phone showed he searchedfor"Risperidone overdose," “I want to kill my autistic child” and “painful ways to die” before his girlfriend's son died of an apparent overdose.
In May, a jury found Ingalls guilty of neglect and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of 5-year-old Brayson Price, who wasborn with Fragile X syndrome,a genetic condition that causes developmental problems, learning impairment and behavioral issues.
On June 26, Ingalls was sentenced to 39 years in prison, records show.
Prosecutors said Brayson's mother, Megan E. Price, also used her cellphone to search overdose information for the boy’s medication.
Pricewas convicted of neglect in a separate trial and was sentenced in June to 36 years in prison, records show.
When aManchester University student gave birth in her dorm room bathtub in March 2016, she claimed that she didn't know she was pregnant and that shegave birth after she passed out while taking a bath. The baby drowned.
Before the baby's death, prosecutors said, Mikayla Munn of Elkhart searched Google for“at home abortions” and “ways to cut the umbilical cord of a baby.”
Munn pleaded guilty to neglect and was sentenced in July to nine years in prison, records show.
Location data puts suspects at the scene
In January and February of2015, police arrested a man they believed robbedliquor stores in Lawrenceburg and Dillsboro.
The suspect called one storeto ask when it closed about 30 minutes before the robbery. When officers plugged that number into Facebook, it led them to Marcus Zanders.
Zanders' Facebook page was filled withphotos and videos posted the day after each robbery showing liquor bottles andpiles of cash, items police believed were taken from the two stores.
Convinced Zanders was their suspect, police asked Sprint to turn over the phone'slocation data, which showed Zanders wasin the areawhen the crimes occurred.
"Each time they make or receive calls, (smart phones) leave a trail of digital crumbs," Chief Justice Rush wrote in Zanders v. Indiana.
Rush and the Indiana court ruled in 2017 that police didn't need a warrant to get the information on Zanders' phone.
Butin a nod to just how quickly digital privacylaw is evolving,two months ago the U.S. Supreme Court overruledthe Zanders decision and many similarcases from courts across the nation.
Setting the limits
The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling sets a new standard for digital privacy.U.S. justicessaid police nowmustget a search warrant before they can obtainlocation data for mobile phones.
The high court's case involvedTimothy Carpenter, who was convicted of committing a string of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio. The court ruled that investigators should haveobtained a warrant for 127 days ofCarpenter's cellphone records, whichfound he wasin the area when four crimes were committed.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling means police can still use a phone's location, but they need to first convince a judge that probable cause exists that a crime has been committed.
Nathan Freed Wessler,staff attorney for the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, called the ruling"arguably the most consequential privacy decision of the digital age."
The court ruled that the information collected by phone companies is private.
"The ruling has broad implications for government access to all manner of information collected about people and stored by the purveyors of popular technologies," Wessler wrote in June 22 blog post.
"The court rejects the government’s expansive argument that people lose their privacy rights merely by using those technologies."
Call IndyStar reporter Vic Ryckaert at 317-444-2701. Follow him on Twitter:@VicRyc.
