Latest / Beyond The Horizon / Murder In Moscow: Bryan Kohberger And His 4th Amendment Rights

Transcript

Murder In Moscow: Bryan Kohberger And His 4th Amendment Rights · Beyond The Horizon

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the program. Today,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: we have an article from the Heritage Foundation, and this
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: article is talking about how the evidence was compiled against
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Brian Cohberger and how that evidence complied with the Fourth Amendment.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I know there's been some questions about that and about
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the genealogy that was used that led the authorities to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Brian Coberger, So I thought that this article would offer
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a little bit of context and a little bit more
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: clarity about all of that. So let's just dive right
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: in and let's see what author Charles Cully Stimpson has
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to say. Headline, how DNA and cell phone evidence in
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Idaho murders complied with the Fourth Amendment. Now, remember that's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: all very important, right, because if someone's constitutional rights are
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: stepped on by the investigators, by the police, they're going
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to use that to their advantage and they should. And
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: there has been plenty of times where people who were
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: obviously guilty got off because the prosecution or the police
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: didn't do everything correctly. Now I'm not saying that happened here,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: but it's always worth exploring. Right, the prosecution and the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: government they have to be on their game and they
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: have to make sure they're doing things by the book,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and if they get caught cutting corners, then they should
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: have to pay the penalty for that. Did the police
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: violate the Fourth Amendment rights of the man accused of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: slaying four college students in Idaho. Much has been made
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: of the fact that authorities relied in part on genetic
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: genealogy and DNA evidence to justify the arrest warrants in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: this case, but the use of such technologies and the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: way it was likely used in this case was lawful,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: as was the use of self self site location information
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: used to track the movements of the suspect's phone. Police
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: have released a partially redacted after David that offers a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: clearer picture of the facts of the case and the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: evidence supporting the alleged killers arrest. And there's no doubt
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that what they did was constitutional. When you go after
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: somebody like Brian Koberger and you conduct a trash pull
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: like they did in Pennsylvania, that is perfectly legal under
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the Constitution of Pennsylvania. Once you discard trash by the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: side of the road, it is now considered a free
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: for all. Right. Anyone can go and go through it
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and look for whatever they want, and that includes the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: police and the authorities DNA at the crime scene. The
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: four murder victims, all students at the University of Idaho,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: were found in a house near the Moscow campus. Each
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: was stabbed to death between approximately four am and four
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to twenty five am on November thirteenth, twenty twenty. Two
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: male and female victims were found stabbed to death in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: a second floor bedroom. Two female victims were found in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a single bet on the third floor. Next to one
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of the deceased girls was a tan leather knife sheath.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Forensic examination found DNA from an unknown male on the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: sheaths button snap. And now, of course there's people out
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: there that will say that the sheath doesn't prove anything.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: What if Brian Coberger was there previously. What if you
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: as friends with one of these girls, and I say, okay,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that's all fine and well, but there's gonna have to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: be some proof of that. Right. You can't go in
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: front of a jury and just say whatever you want.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: They're gonna demand proof of that. And while the burden
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: of proof is certainly on the prosecution, you can't just
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: say whatever you want is the defense and expect the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: court to accept it. So they're going to have to
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: explain how that DNA got on the button of that sheath,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: and from my seat here in the peanut gallery, I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: just don't know how they plan on doing that self
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: cite location evidence, and this is the weakest evidence out
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of all of it. If this was all they had,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I'd be laughing them right out of the courtroom. But
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: when you tie this together with the other stuff, well,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it paints a different picture, right, And it certainly gives you,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: at the very least probable cause. And there was enough
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of that probable cause for the judge to issue a warrant.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Several months before the murders. On August twenty first, a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: county sheriff in Moscow stopped the suspect for a traffic infraction.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: He was driving a white twenty fifteen Hondai a Lantra
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: with Pennsylvania plates. He provided his cell phone number to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the officer. And this was one of the biggest mistakes
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Coburger made, because they were able to cross reference all
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of this stuff, look at the phone records and place
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: this numb nut at the scene of the crime. How
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: many times twelve at least every cell phone receives and
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: sends signal to a local cell tower when the phone
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: is turned on. As the cell phone moves, the signal
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: transfers seamlessly from one tower to the next in the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: direction the phone is moving. Cell Phone service providers keep
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: records on every cell phone using its services, including all
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: cell site location information, and this information provides a map
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of where and when the phone went while it was on.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So we know that Brian Coberger, according to the Affidavid,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: turned his phone off at the time that these murders
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: were committed. Law enforcement applied for and was granted a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: search warrant for historical phone records for the alleged murderer's
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: phone number. The record showed the account had been opened
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: on June twenty third of twenty twenty two for a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: subscriber with the name of the suspect, who was listed
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: at an address in all Brightsville, Pennsylvania. So Brian Coberger
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: was keeping his address in all Brightsville, and I can
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: understand that, right. Maybe he didn't plan on staying in Pullman,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and that wasn't going to be his permanent address up there,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: so he didn't want to go through the rigamarole of
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: changing all of that. I get that, but I think
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: he made a pretty big mistake by changing his plates
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: out when he did. Now I know that they were
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: up for renewal, but it really looked bad for him
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: and really turns some eyes his way. When you have
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that car that was seen at the crime and then
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: it changes its plates like that, you know there's going
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: to be some suspicion. A review of the historical CSLI
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: data revealed that prior to the date of the murders,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the phone at Ping cell towers in the area of
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the murder scene on twelve separate occasions, always in the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: evening or early morning hours. In fact, three months before
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the murders, on August twenty first, the suspect's phone pinged
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a cell tower that provided coverage to the King Road
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: residence for over an hour from ten thirty four pm
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: to eleven thirty five pm. So, oh boy, according to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the phone records, anyway, was sitting out here and watching
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: this house for an hour. I'm sure he wasn't out
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: there doing homework or talking on the internet or anything
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: like that. So he's gonna have to explain that in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: court as well. On the night of the murders, CLSI
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: shows the phone at her nearest suspect's apartment in Pullman, Washington,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: at two forty two am. For the next five minutes,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: it moves south through Pullman, then stops pinging altogether, indicating
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the phone was then either turned off or put into
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: airplane mode. Two hours later, at four forty eight am,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the phone signal returned, pinging towers near State Highway ninety
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: five south of Moscow and Blaine, Idaho. The phone then
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: traveled south to Genese, Idaho, west to Uniontown, Idaho, and
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: then north, arriving back at the suspects apartment at five
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: thirty am. And during this ride home, I'm convinced at
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: this point that Brian Koberger got rid of evidence and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: with the desolation out there, good luck at ever finding it.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: The CLSI footprint of the suspected killer's phone is consistent
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: with the times, dates, and routes of the white A
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Lantras seen in video surveillance footage recovered from his neighborhood,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: his university, and the roads and highways between his apartment
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and the King Road residents. Did the police violate the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: murder suspect's Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining his CSLI information
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: not at all. In Carpenter versus United States twenty eighteen,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court raised the standard for allowing
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: police to access SCLI records. Previously, the government would apply
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: for a court order to obtain cell phone records under
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the Stored Communications Act. Those requests did not have to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: meet the probable cause standard needed to obtain a search
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: warrant because the information was considered to be in the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: hands of a third party. The cell phone user therefore
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: could have no reasonable exps of privacy over his CSLI.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Carpenter upended that practice, requiring police to seek a search
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: warrant for any CSLI if the scope of the request
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: is more than seven days of data. And I think
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that was a good move by the Supreme Court, right.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: We don't want the police to be able to just
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: snoop around willy nilly, but when there's a reason for it,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: then there has to be levers and channels that they
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: can go through to get that information. In Idaho, the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: police were fully compliant. They first sought a search warrant
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: for two days of CSLI data centered around the time
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of the slayings. After reviewing those recordings, they then requested
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: and received a warrant for all CSLI from June to December.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: That data paints a damning map of the whereabouts of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the suspect's phone in the months leading up to the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: murders and on the night of the crimes. Prosecutors will
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: argue that the alleged killer scoped out the murder site
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: a dozen times in the dark of night prior to
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the quadruple homicides. They will certainly argue that, based on
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the map of the phone's movement on the night of
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the murders, the suspect left his residence after two am,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: drove toward Idaho, turned off the phone while he committed
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the murders, and then turned on the phone after the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: murders were over. And we saw that in the probable
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: cause Affid David certainly something that the prosecutors are contending.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: When overlaid with the movement of the white Alantra, the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: cell phone's movement would appear to be quite persuasive, no
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: doubt about it. But we need more. It's not good
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: enough for me anyway, just to have cell phone data,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: especially considering that it can ping off these towers all
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: over the place. Genetic genealogy, What about the admissibility of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the DNA evidence. On December twenty seventh, Pennsylvania law enforcement
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: officers retreat trash from the suspect family, residents in all Brightsville.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Under the Supreme Court's decision in California versus Greenwood, the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of garbage outside of a home. Lab testing compared DNA
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: found on some of the retrieved trash and the DNA
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: obtained from the sheath founded the crime scene. The lab
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: concluded that at least ninety nine point nine eight percent
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: of the male population would be expected to be excluded
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: from the possibility of being the suspect's biological father. In
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: plain English, that means the trash DNA came from the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: father of the person who left the DNA on the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: sheath at the crime scene, and that science is very
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: very strong. That's the same thing they use for paternity
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: tests and stuff, so very very strong science. The affidavit
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: is deliberately vague on how the authorities came to this conclusion,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: but it's not hard to figure out what happened. No doubt.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Police subjected the sheath DNA to two separate tests, one
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: to forensically identify the DNA profile for admission into court,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and one to create a SNIP based genetic profile that
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: might enable them to connect that person's DNA to a
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: close relative. SNIP stands for single nucleotide polymorphism and is,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: in Layman's terms, a sequence variation that allows geneticis to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: identify close relatives through genetic genealogy. And it's crazy how
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: far this science has come. I'm forty three years old,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and the leaps and bounds that this science has made
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: since I've been a kid is just amazing. Police were
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: able to tie the profiles of the suspect and his
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: father together, and because the suspect is an only child,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: this was enough to establish probable cause and a rest
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: him for the homicides. A quick correction, not an only child,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: but his only son. He has a sister. If the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: case goes to a contested trial, the government's case will
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: hinge not only on the CSLI, DNA and genetic genealogy
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: evidence described above, but also witness testimony, audio evidence, video
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: evidence of the travels of the defendants, White Alantra, and
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: other evidence of the defendants online activities. Like all defendants,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the Moscow murder suspect is presumed innocent unless until proven
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But there is no doubt
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: that there are no Fourth Amendment issues with respect to
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the CLSI or DNA evidence in this case. So I
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: know there had been a lot of talk about that
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the Fourth Amendment and if Brian Koberger's constitutional rights had
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: been stepped on, and the answer to that emphatically is no.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So I don't even expect Brian Colberger's legal team to
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: attempt to challenge any of that as far as on
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a constitutional basis. Instead, they're gonna focus on other things.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: They're going to focus on, you know, trying to put
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: somebody else at the scene of the crime, trying to
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: punch holes in what the experts have to say, and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: doing whatever they can to try and cause at the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: very least some reasonable doubt in the minds of those jurors.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: All Right, folks, that's gonna do it for this one.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: All of the information that goes with the episode can
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: be found in the description box.