A second skilled on smartphone forensics testified Wednesday within the Karen Learn trial that Jennifer McCabe’s Google search about hypothermia occurred after John O’Keefe’s stays had been discovered, not earlier than, because the protection has argued.
Jessica Hyde testified that she may say with scientific certainty that McCabe used her iPhone to go looking the phrase “hos (sic) long to die in cold” at 6:24 a.m.
The protection declare that the search occurred at 2:27 a.m. – hours earlier than investigators say Learn, McCabe and Kerry Roberts discovered O’Keefe lifeless within the snow at 34 Fairview Street – is wrong, she testified.
The sooner timestamp has no connection to the search however is definitely assigned to the time McCabe opened the browser tab on her cellphone.
That testimony supported earlier testimony from Ian Whiffin, a digital forensic skilled from the agency Cellebrite, which makes a few of the software program and {hardware} that investigators use to search for info on telephones and different units.
Hyde testified utilizing particular phrases – “hex editors,” “hash values” and database recordsdata, wading into technical particulars about how cellphone knowledge is extracted, preserved and interpreted.
Even inexperienced analysts can have hassle making sense of issues, she testified.
David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area protection legal professional who has been following the case, questioned the prosecution’s resolution to have an skilled witness for such technical testimony take the stand earlier than the court docket’s noon break.
“For an expert, you want them to make it make sense to a 5-year-old,” he instructed Fox Information Digital. “They failed today. Add in that it was an incredibly boring subject, I would bet the jurors were just looking at the clock the whole time thinking what they will order for lunch.”
After lunch, protection lawyer Robert Alessi dealt with the cross-examination, citing the identical technical phrases and grilling Hyde about her testimony at Learn’s first trial, which he was not a part of.
The trial final 12 months ended with a deadlocked jury, main the state to usher in particular prosecutor Hank Brennan to retry the case.
With out the jury current, Alessi requested the court docket for permission to reference a latest Maryland case that he stated confirmed Hyde was an unreliable witness. Decide Beverly Cannone sided with Brennan’s crew and stated he couldn’t carry up the choose’s resolution in that case, however she stated he can be free to cross-examine Hyde on the methodology she used to make her findings.
Below cross-examination, she testified that O’Keefe’s cellphone was not secured in alignment with established “best practices” after police recovered it from the scene.
She sparred with Alessi, typically utilizing the identical technical phrases which will have alienated the jury on direct examination, Gelman stated.
“Jurors don’t want to sit through this for days and days,” he stated. “They want to get into the meat and potatoes.”
Learn has pleaded not responsible to prices of homicide, manslaughter and fleeing the scene.
She may face life in jail if convicted of the highest cost.
Massachusetts prosecutors allege she backed her Lexus SUV into and fatally struck O’Keefe earlier than driving away after an evening out ingesting in Canton, a suburb of Boston.
By means of her protection legal professionals, she has denied hanging him in any respect.
Earlier in Wednesday’s continuing, Massachusetts State Trooper Connor Keefe took the stand to debate how he collected proof within the case, together with telephones from McCabe and Roberts in addition to damaged items of a taillight and O’Keefe’s sneaker from the crime scene.
At one level, he opened an proof bag in entrance of the jury, and it had three items of damaged plastic inside, not the anticipated two.
“Do you know if the other piece in the bag is a piece that broke off?” Brennan requested. “Do you know how that arrived there?”
“I do not,” Keefe stated.
Brennan requested for the items to be moved into proof, however after an objection from Learn’s protection, the court docket instructed Keefe to put the third piece in a separate proof bag.
However Keefe’s testimony helped prosecutors set up a agency timeline of when and the place police discovered damaged taillight fragments: within the snow-covered road in entrance of 34 Fairview Street, the place O’Keefe and Learn had been seen the evening earlier than.
Testimony is predicted to renew shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday.
