The Final Chapter: Digital Forensics Served The Right Justice
Welcome back to our blog series, this will be the last and final chapter for our friend, Steve, our falsely accused friend. In the previous blogs, we saw how Digital forensics is important for the law and why one might need digital forensics to help them. With the advancing technology, not all crimes are physical and now there are cyber-crimes that occur. Steve, our friend, has gotten evidence and now we can look at some cases that were solved using digital forensics to see how they helped solve their case.
Digital Footprint is the amount of usage of data on various devices that are critical in solving the case. An example of this was a case of
Matt Baker-2010
In this case, Matt Baker who was a Baptist preacher, was convicted of murder of his wife. In the year 2006, Ms. Baker had apparently committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. The suicide was confirmed based on a suicide note found by the body. However, after the investigation was conducted it was realized that Matt Baker’s search history had included “overdosing on sleeping pill” as well as other websites prior to his wife’s death.
Krenar Lusha — 2009.
The case was about Krenar Lusha of the United Kingdom was arrested based on his internet search pattern. After investigating his laptop, it was found that he had downloaded a manual of 4300 GM to make explosives and search belts. When they searched his apartment for further investigation, the police also recovered 71.8 l of petrol, potassium nitrate, and a live shotgun cartridge. He had also used his laptop to chat with people via MSN, describing himself as a terrorist or a sniper. He presented himself as a person who wanted to see Jewish and American people killed. These conversations were retrieved from his computer and used as digital evidence in the court. Once again Digital forensics was able to help solve a case.
Mikayla Munn-2016
A Manchester University student, Mikayla Munn, gave birth to a baby in her dorm room bathtub. She immediately drowned her new born in the bath tub but covered it up stating that she was not aware of her pregnancy and labor pains were felt while taking a bath, followed by the baby’s arrival. On verifying her digital assets, investigators have found that she had searched on Google for “at home abortions” and “ways to cut the umbilical cord of a baby.”
As we can see Digital Forensics has helped with many cases and helped bring justice to the innocent. In our case, our wrongly accused Steve has nothing to worry about. As seen many times, even if evidence isn’t physical there are still ways of retrieving it. The digital Forensics job is to uncover what is not there to the naked eye, to find the invisible evidence. Luckily, for our friend Steve, we have Digital Forensics on our side to help prove his innocence. That’s it for this Blog series and our Chapter of Steve, we’ve seen the importance of digital forensics and how people need it in the court of law alongside a few examples. I hope you enjoyed these blog series and stay tuned for our next upcoming series.
Sources:
1: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/texas-pastor-matt-baker-convicted-wifes-2006-murder/story?id=11092046
2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/derbyshire/8414527.stm
