Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the program. Today,
Speaker 1: we have an article from the Heritage Foundation, and this
Speaker 1: article is talking about how the evidence was compiled against
Speaker 1: Brian Cohberger and how that evidence complied with the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 1: I know there's been some questions about that and about
Speaker 1: the genealogy that was used that led the authorities to
Speaker 1: Brian Coberger, So I thought that this article would offer
Speaker 1: a little bit of context and a little bit more
Speaker 1: clarity about all of that. So let's just dive right
Speaker 1: in and let's see what author Charles Cully Stimpson has
Speaker 1: to say. Headline, how DNA and cell phone evidence in
Speaker 1: Idaho murders complied with the Fourth Amendment. Now, remember that's
Speaker 1: all very important, right, because if someone's constitutional rights are
Speaker 1: stepped on by the investigators, by the police, they're going
Speaker 1: to use that to their advantage and they should. And
Speaker 1: there has been plenty of times where people who were
Speaker 1: obviously guilty got off because the prosecution or the police
Speaker 1: didn't do everything correctly. Now I'm not saying that happened here,
Speaker 1: but it's always worth exploring. Right, the prosecution and the
Speaker 1: government they have to be on their game and they
Speaker 1: have to make sure they're doing things by the book,
Speaker 1: and if they get caught cutting corners, then they should
Speaker 1: have to pay the penalty for that. Did the police
Speaker 1: violate the Fourth Amendment rights of the man accused of
Speaker 1: slaying four college students in Idaho. Much has been made
Speaker 1: of the fact that authorities relied in part on genetic
Speaker 1: genealogy and DNA evidence to justify the arrest warrants in
Speaker 1: this case, but the use of such technologies and the
Speaker 1: way it was likely used in this case was lawful,
Speaker 1: as was the use of self self site location information
Speaker 1: used to track the movements of the suspect's phone. Police
Speaker 1: have released a partially redacted after David that offers a
Speaker 1: clearer picture of the facts of the case and the
Speaker 1: evidence supporting the alleged killers arrest. And there's no doubt
Speaker 1: that what they did was constitutional. When you go after
Speaker 1: somebody like Brian Koberger and you conduct a trash pull
Speaker 1: like they did in Pennsylvania, that is perfectly legal under
Speaker 1: the Constitution of Pennsylvania. Once you discard trash by the
Speaker 1: side of the road, it is now considered a free
Speaker 1: for all. Right. Anyone can go and go through it
Speaker 1: and look for whatever they want, and that includes the
Speaker 1: police and the authorities DNA at the crime scene. The
Speaker 1: four murder victims, all students at the University of Idaho,
Speaker 1: were found in a house near the Moscow campus. Each
Speaker 1: was stabbed to death between approximately four am and four
Speaker 1: to twenty five am on November thirteenth, twenty twenty. Two
Speaker 1: male and female victims were found stabbed to death in
Speaker 1: a second floor bedroom. Two female victims were found in
Speaker 1: a single bet on the third floor. Next to one
Speaker 1: of the deceased girls was a tan leather knife sheath.
Speaker 1: Forensic examination found DNA from an unknown male on the
Speaker 1: sheaths button snap. And now, of course there's people out
Speaker 1: there that will say that the sheath doesn't prove anything.
Speaker 1: What if Brian Coberger was there previously. What if you
Speaker 1: as friends with one of these girls, and I say, okay,
Speaker 1: that's all fine and well, but there's gonna have to
Speaker 1: be some proof of that. Right. You can't go in
Speaker 1: front of a jury and just say whatever you want.
Speaker 1: They're gonna demand proof of that. And while the burden
Speaker 1: of proof is certainly on the prosecution, you can't just
Speaker 1: say whatever you want is the defense and expect the
Speaker 1: court to accept it. So they're going to have to
Speaker 1: explain how that DNA got on the button of that sheath,
Speaker 1: and from my seat here in the peanut gallery, I
Speaker 1: just don't know how they plan on doing that self
Speaker 1: cite location evidence, and this is the weakest evidence out
Speaker 1: of all of it. If this was all they had,
Speaker 1: I'd be laughing them right out of the courtroom. But
Speaker 1: when you tie this together with the other stuff, well,
Speaker 1: it paints a different picture, right, And it certainly gives you,
Speaker 1: at the very least probable cause. And there was enough
Speaker 1: of that probable cause for the judge to issue a warrant.
Speaker 1: Several months before the murders. On August twenty first, a
Speaker 1: county sheriff in Moscow stopped the suspect for a traffic infraction.
Speaker 1: He was driving a white twenty fifteen Hondai a Lantra
Speaker 1: with Pennsylvania plates. He provided his cell phone number to
Speaker 1: the officer. And this was one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 1: Coburger made, because they were able to cross reference all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, look at the phone records and place
Speaker 1: this numb nut at the scene of the crime. How
Speaker 1: many times twelve at least every cell phone receives and
Speaker 1: sends signal to a local cell tower when the phone
Speaker 1: is turned on. As the cell phone moves, the signal
Speaker 1: transfers seamlessly from one tower to the next in the
Speaker 1: direction the phone is moving. Cell Phone service providers keep
Speaker 1: records on every cell phone using its services, including all
Speaker 1: cell site location information, and this information provides a map
Speaker 1: of where and when the phone went while it was on.
Speaker 1: So we know that Brian Coberger, according to the Affidavid,
Speaker 1: turned his phone off at the time that these murders
Speaker 1: were committed. Law enforcement applied for and was granted a
Speaker 1: search warrant for historical phone records for the alleged murderer's
Speaker 1: phone number. The record showed the account had been opened
Speaker 1: on June twenty third of twenty twenty two for a
Speaker 1: subscriber with the name of the suspect, who was listed
Speaker 1: at an address in all Brightsville, Pennsylvania. So Brian Coberger
Speaker 1: was keeping his address in all Brightsville, and I can
Speaker 1: understand that, right. Maybe he didn't plan on staying in Pullman,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't going to be his permanent address up there,
Speaker 1: so he didn't want to go through the rigamarole of
Speaker 1: changing all of that. I get that, but I think
Speaker 1: he made a pretty big mistake by changing his plates
Speaker 1: out when he did. Now I know that they were
Speaker 1: up for renewal, but it really looked bad for him
Speaker 1: and really turns some eyes his way. When you have
Speaker 1: that car that was seen at the crime and then
Speaker 1: it changes its plates like that, you know there's going
Speaker 1: to be some suspicion. A review of the historical CSLI
Speaker 1: data revealed that prior to the date of the murders,
Speaker 1: the phone at Ping cell towers in the area of
Speaker 1: the murder scene on twelve separate occasions, always in the
Speaker 1: evening or early morning hours. In fact, three months before
Speaker 1: the murders, on August twenty first, the suspect's phone pinged
Speaker 1: a cell tower that provided coverage to the King Road
Speaker 1: residence for over an hour from ten thirty four pm
Speaker 1: to eleven thirty five pm. So, oh boy, according to
Speaker 1: the phone records, anyway, was sitting out here and watching
Speaker 1: this house for an hour. I'm sure he wasn't out
Speaker 1: there doing homework or talking on the internet or anything
Speaker 1: like that. So he's gonna have to explain that in
Speaker 1: court as well. On the night of the murders, CLSI
Speaker 1: shows the phone at her nearest suspect's apartment in Pullman, Washington,
Speaker 1: at two forty two am. For the next five minutes,
Speaker 1: it moves south through Pullman, then stops pinging altogether, indicating
Speaker 1: the phone was then either turned off or put into
Speaker 1: airplane mode. Two hours later, at four forty eight am,
Speaker 1: the phone signal returned, pinging towers near State Highway ninety
Speaker 1: five south of Moscow and Blaine, Idaho. The phone then
Speaker 1: traveled south to Genese, Idaho, west to Uniontown, Idaho, and
Speaker 1: then north, arriving back at the suspects apartment at five
Speaker 1: thirty am. And during this ride home, I'm convinced at
Speaker 1: this point that Brian Koberger got rid of evidence and
Speaker 1: with the desolation out there, good luck at ever finding it.
Speaker 1: The CLSI footprint of the suspected killer's phone is consistent
Speaker 1: with the times, dates, and routes of the white A
Speaker 1: Lantras seen in video surveillance footage recovered from his neighborhood,
Speaker 1: his university, and the roads and highways between his apartment
Speaker 1: and the King Road residents. Did the police violate the
Speaker 1: murder suspect's Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining his CSLI information
Speaker 1: not at all. In Carpenter versus United States twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court raised the standard for allowing
Speaker 1: police to access SCLI records. Previously, the government would apply
Speaker 1: for a court order to obtain cell phone records under
Speaker 1: the Stored Communications Act. Those requests did not have to
Speaker 1: meet the probable cause standard needed to obtain a search
Speaker 1: warrant because the information was considered to be in the
Speaker 1: hands of a third party. The cell phone user therefore
Speaker 1: could have no reasonable exps of privacy over his CSLI.
Speaker 1: Carpenter upended that practice, requiring police to seek a search
Speaker 1: warrant for any CSLI if the scope of the request
Speaker 1: is more than seven days of data. And I think
Speaker 1: that was a good move by the Supreme Court, right.
Speaker 1: We don't want the police to be able to just
Speaker 1: snoop around willy nilly, but when there's a reason for it,
Speaker 1: then there has to be levers and channels that they
Speaker 1: can go through to get that information. In Idaho, the
Speaker 1: police were fully compliant. They first sought a search warrant
Speaker 1: for two days of CSLI data centered around the time
Speaker 1: of the slayings. After reviewing those recordings, they then requested
Speaker 1: and received a warrant for all CSLI from June to December.
Speaker 1: That data paints a damning map of the whereabouts of
Speaker 1: the suspect's phone in the months leading up to the
Speaker 1: murders and on the night of the crimes. Prosecutors will
Speaker 1: argue that the alleged killer scoped out the murder site
Speaker 1: a dozen times in the dark of night prior to
Speaker 1: the quadruple homicides. They will certainly argue that, based on
Speaker 1: the map of the phone's movement on the night of
Speaker 1: the murders, the suspect left his residence after two am,
Speaker 1: drove toward Idaho, turned off the phone while he committed
Speaker 1: the murders, and then turned on the phone after the
Speaker 1: murders were over. And we saw that in the probable
Speaker 1: cause Affid David certainly something that the prosecutors are contending.
Speaker 1: When overlaid with the movement of the white Alantra, the
Speaker 1: cell phone's movement would appear to be quite persuasive, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. But we need more. It's not good
Speaker 1: enough for me anyway, just to have cell phone data,
Speaker 1: especially considering that it can ping off these towers all
Speaker 1: over the place. Genetic genealogy, What about the admissibility of
Speaker 1: the DNA evidence. On December twenty seventh, Pennsylvania law enforcement
Speaker 1: officers retreat trash from the suspect family, residents in all Brightsville.
Speaker 1: Under the Supreme Court's decision in California versus Greenwood, the
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure
Speaker 1: of garbage outside of a home. Lab testing compared DNA
Speaker 1: found on some of the retrieved trash and the DNA
Speaker 1: obtained from the sheath founded the crime scene. The lab
Speaker 1: concluded that at least ninety nine point nine eight percent
Speaker 1: of the male population would be expected to be excluded
Speaker 1: from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father. In
Speaker 1: plain English, that means the trash DNA came from the
Speaker 1: father of the person who left the DNA on the
Speaker 1: sheath at the crime scene, and that science is very
Speaker 1: very strong. That's the same thing they use for paternity
Speaker 1: tests and stuff, so very very strong science. The affidavit
Speaker 1: is deliberately vague on how the authorities came to this conclusion,
Speaker 1: but it's not hard to figure out what happened. No doubt.
Speaker 1: Police subjected the sheath DNA to two separate tests, one
Speaker 1: to forensically identify the DNA profile for admission into court,
Speaker 1: and one to create a SNIP based genetic profile that
Speaker 1: might enable them to connect that person's DNA to a
Speaker 1: close relative. SNIP stands for single nucleotide polymorphism and is,
Speaker 1: in Layman's terms, a sequence variation that allows geneticis to
Speaker 1: identify close relatives through genetic genealogy. And it's crazy how
Speaker 1: far this science has come. I'm forty three years old,
Speaker 1: and the leaps and bounds that this science has made
Speaker 1: since I've been a kid is just amazing. Police were
Speaker 1: able to tie the profiles of the suspect and his
Speaker 1: father together, and because the suspect is an only child,
Speaker 1: this was enough to establish probable cause and a rest
Speaker 1: him for the homicides. A quick correction, not an only child,
Speaker 1: but his only son. He has a sister. If the
Speaker 1: case goes to a contested trial, the government's case will
Speaker 1: hinge not only on the CSLI, DNA and genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: evidence described above, but also witness testimony, audio evidence, video
Speaker 1: evidence of the travels of the defendants, White Alantra, and
Speaker 1: other evidence of the defendants online activities. Like all defendants,
Speaker 1: the Moscow murder suspect is presumed innocent unless until proven
Speaker 1: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But there is no doubt
Speaker 1: that there are no Fourth Amendment issues with respect to
Speaker 1: the CLSI or DNA evidence in this case. So I
Speaker 1: know there had been a lot of talk about that
Speaker 1: the Fourth Amendment and if Brian Koberger's constitutional rights had
Speaker 1: been stepped on, and the answer to that emphatically is no.
Speaker 1: So I don't even expect Brian Colberger's legal team to
Speaker 1: attempt to challenge any of that as far as on
Speaker 1: a constitutional basis. Instead, they're gonna focus on other things.
Speaker 1: They're going to focus on, you know, trying to put
Speaker 1: somebody else at the scene of the crime, trying to
Speaker 1: punch holes in what the experts have to say, and
Speaker 1: doing whatever they can to try and cause at the
Speaker 1: very least some reasonable doubt in the minds of those jurors.
Speaker 1: All Right, folks, that's gonna do it for this one.
Speaker 1: All of the information that goes with the episode can
Speaker 1: be found in the description box.