Our smartphones contain a lot of information about us, some of which we might not even be aware of, which in some instances might actually be useful when trying to prove and solve a crime. A good example would be in the recent trial of Jeff West, a man accused of killing his wife, Kat West.
According to the report, Kat West was found dead on the street outside her home in 2018. Her husband claimed that they both had a lot to drink the night before, and that he suspected that she might have gotten up, slipped, and fell. However, the prosecutor believes differently where they think that Jeff West, during a drunken argument, took Kat West’s iPhone and threw it outside.
When she went to retrieve it, he followed her and struck her in the head with a bottle which was the cause of her death. Jeff West denied these allegations, but that’s where the iPhone Health app came in. The app, which tracks the number of steps users make throughout the day, recorded 18 steps after 11pm, which is roughly around the same time Kat West’s iPhone last recorded her moving. This goes against his claims that he had gone to bed at 10:30pm.
This is not the first time we’re hearing about our technology being used as evidence in criminal cases. In the past, we’ve seen instances of how a fitness tracker helped to convict a hitman, and there was also a case in which police attempted to access an Amazon Echo’s data, believing that it contained information that could help solve a murder case.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, iOS, iPhone and Legal. Source: al