Posted on 11/26/2012 7:00:33 AM PST by Uncle Chip
A major piece of evidence in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin has yet to be analyzed - his cell phone.
Attorneys for shooter George Zimmerman are fighting to get information pulled from phone records in the hope of shedding light on the teenager's death.
The phone was found at the scene with its battery dead on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed on February 26 in Sanford, Florida.
It is a two-year-old Huawei U8150 smartphone, sold by T-Mobile as the 'Comet,' which shot video and photos as well as had internet connectivity.
Police have tried without success to download data from the phone. They even asked the teenager's father Tracy Martin for the security codes to unlock it, but after he did not provide them, police gave the phone to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Mr Martin told them he would check with attorneys but authorities say he never again addressed their request.
He later told reporters he would not help police download information from the phone.
'I don't know anything about that,' said family attorney Benjamin Crump. 'We're going to do anything prosecutors say we should.' Zimmerman's attorney said that crime-lab specialists have only had partial success retrieving messages and photos from the device.
Without the security code, analysts are unable to unlock the phone and download information from its primary data storage site.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The complications and risk regarding accessing the phone without the cooperation of the father are here:
http://diwataman.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/to-access-trayvons-phone/#more-2156
I find this inability to get at the internals of the cell phone to be completely unbelievable. It is a stall tactic by the prosecutor.
I’m afraid I don’t understand this. If the phone contains or may contain evidence that might help the defense, they have every right to a court order giving them access. They don’t need anybody’s permission or cooperation.
'I don't know anything about that,' said family attorney Benjamin Crump. 'We're going to do anything prosecutors say we should.'
So then are you going to do anything that the police or FDLE or FBI say you should??? or just what the prosecutors say you should do???
And the prosecutors haven't told you to cooperate with law enforcement in this matter???
Okay -- you say that it's the prosecutor's fault.
The Decembe 11th hearing should be fun.
Be there this time, Ben.
I think they want to keep the onus on the prosecutor to provide it to them so as to maintain the chain of custody. And because the prosecutor has tools at its disposal that the defense does not have being that it is an arm of the state. And if something happens and the information is “accidentally” deleted, then that is on the prosecutor.
That is my best guess.
The battery was dead? His girlfriend said she was talking to him right before he was shot. Were they both dead?
What’s supposed to happen at the Dec. 11th hearing?
According to the police reports cited in the article, the battery was either too low or the phone was damaged by the rain that night.
It’s a scheduled hearing.
But the phone and questions regarding it will be on the agenda, per MOM.
It probably took a while until the phone was collected as evidence and the battery had discharged by then (or someone didn’t turn it off and let it discharge in evidence - but neglected to collect the data stored in it).
1. My, my, the picture of Trayvon shows him to be such an innocent young man compared to the mugshot of George.
2. Why would Trayvon’s father have the security code to Trayvon’s phone?
From Santiago’s March 2nd report:
Feb 26
I noticed a black cell phone near the area of Martin. I then contacted Agent Shor from CCIB to my location and asked him to bring the celabrite device, a device that is used to download cell phone information. Upon Agent Shor’s arrival he told me that he could not download any information because the cell phone battery was either very low or was not operable because the cell phone had gotten wet because of the current weather condition (wet and rain).
February 28
I spoke with SA Carter who told me we did not need a search warrant. I had CST Smith take the cell phone to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office to see if they could download the cell phone.
March 1
I was contacted by the supervisor from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that they could not do anything with the cell phone other than download what was on the memory chip because they did not have the password.
On March 2
I contacted via email and asked Sgt. Ciesla to recover the phone back from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
Now from Santiago’s March 6th report;
March 1
I was contacted by the supervisor from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that unless they had the swipe code they could not access the victims cell phone.
March 2
Inv. Singleton contacted a representative from T-Mobile who told her if the Sanford Police Department obtained the cell phone number and the pin number to the account they would be able to access the swipe code on the cell phone.
March 5
I contacted Mr. Martin(victims father) via cell phone and asked if I could obtain the pin number from the victims cell phone. Mr. Martin stated he would have to contact his lawyer before releasing that information.
—End Reports—
From the Property and Evidence Chain of Custody
March 9th
The phone was moved out of evidence for review by Sgt. Kent of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office at 9:13 am and returned that same day at 4:00 pm. (We do not have this report)
March 20th
The phone was moved out of evidence by JDB of the FDLE at 9:23am where apparently it remains to this day.(We do not have any reports from the FDLE on the phone aside from a latent print report (p.119) that was cancelled before the print test was done.)
The Huwai is a 3.X Android OS smart phone.
When you set-up the phone and its Google account, you can secure the data with a PIN and also prevent access to the phone with a PIN.
The data are encrypted at-rest.
It’s legit.
Obama voter kills Obama voter. I hope they burn Zimmerman and turn the “white Hispanics” against “Holder’s People” while we Amish laugh.
Apparently they got the phone to work later. The police placed a 911 Call from it on March 2 at 12:45pm and there were subsequent call backs on it from the Sanford Police Department. These are reflected in the phone records that Tracy Martin provided to ABC here:
http://diwataman.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/trayvons-phone-records/
The primary one is what is he trying to hide? Remember that immediately after the shooting the son was presented to and by the LMSM has an innocent child. It was only later that we saw a contemporary photo, learned of his semi-criminal records at school and his postings on the web.
IMHO. I strongly suspect that the core memory has material that would greatly weaken the state's case as well as cast aspersions on the behavior of his father in the weeks following the shooting.
Really? The authorities can’t hack into a phone?
Maybe they should get some third grade boy who plays videos to do it.
The prosecution's goal is to see that Zimmermann is found guilty (and to please Trayvon's family). They have no interest in having information come out that might cause the jurors to vote for acquittal.
Every time there is a gross miscarriage of justice in a publicized case, it weakens the public's faith in the judicial system. It's bad enough when a palpably guilty party walks free. It's much worse if an innocent person is found guilty. That still seems likely to happen in this case.
The irony is that Zimmermann would be considered black if he were not part-Hispanic, but the media invented a new category in order to call him a "white Hispanic" (his grandmother was half black and half Peruvian Indian in ancestry...he is one-eighth black, the same percentage as Homer Plessy of the famous 1896 case).
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