[ad_1]
Alexa may have listened, as she almost always does, when Christine Sullivan was stabbed to death in the kitchen of Farmington, N.H., the house where Sullivan lived with her boyfriend on the night of January 27, 2017.
But does Alexa remember it?
This is the question that prosecutors hope to produce essential evidence in the case of the murder of Timothy Verrill, accused of murdering Sullivan and his friend Jenna Pelligrini, suspected of having informed the police of a drug operation. Prosecutors said that Alexa, the artificial woman who personifies the Amazon Echo smart device, had sat all the time on the kitchen counter.
At present, a judge has ordered Amazon to return all Echo tape recordings dated Jan. 27, the date the women were murdered, until January 29, when the police discovered them hidden under a tarpaulin under the back porch.
"The court finds that there is a likely reason to believe that the server (s) and / or registers kept for or by Amazon.com contain recordings made by the Echo Smartphone from January 27 to 29, 2017 … and that this information contains evidence of crimes committed against Ms. Sullivan, including the attack and the possible removal of the body from the kitchen. "
Verrill pleaded not guilty. His lawyer could not be reached for comment.
The case of Verrill marks at least the second time that Amazon is entangled in a big-issue murder case in which its device, a voice-activated task manager, turns into a de facto witness of the day. charge. (Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
In a statement to The post office, a spokesman for Amazon said that Amazon would not communicate the data as easily, seeming to give priority to consumer privacy, as it has done in the past.
"Amazon will not disclose any customer information without a valid and binding legal request duly notified," said the spokesman. "Amazon is naturally opposed to excessive or inappropriate demands."
There is no guarantee that Alexa will become a star witness. For the Echo Smart Device to be enabled, the words "Alexa", "Computer" or "Echo" should generally be displayed. These are the "wake up words" that trigger the device registration.
But if Alexa really listened, the evidence gathered up here indicates that she would have heard a horrible attack.
The investigators presented essentially circumstantial evidence against the suspect, Timothy Verrill, at a bail hearing under evidence last summer.
On January 29, Dean Smoronk, Sullivan's boyfriend, the owner of the house where the women were killed, told the police that he was returning home after a trip to Florida to discover that the scene had been turned into a crime, the Sgt of the New Hampshire State Police. Brian Strong testified at a hearing on the bail of evidence last summer. Sullivan could not be found, so he called 911.
When the police arrived, they found blood splattered on the walls of the kitchen and on the refrigerator, Strong said. He was soaked in the mattress of the room on the floor, where the police think that Pellegrini was stabbed 43 times.
Previously, Verrill had lived at home with Sullivan and Smoronk, and he had been friends with everyone. Verrill's defense lawyer revealed that Strong had revealed that the house where the murders had occurred was also at the center of a so-called drug-trafficking empire. Foster's Daily Democrat reported. Verrill's lawyer, Melissa Davis, suggested that this opened up new possibilities for investigating other suspects, thus preserving Verrill's innocence, Foster's reported.
Prosecutors, however, said that Verrill's behavior on the night of the murder and in the days that followed made him the prime suspect.
On the night of the murder, Smoronk, the alleged drug trafficker, received a call from Verrill early in the morning of January 27: Verrill, Smoronk told the police, that she feared that Jenna Pellegrini would be an informant, Foster's reported.
In just a few hours, home surveillance captured Verrill as he arrived home wearing a flannel shirt and a baseball cap, Strong said during the bail hearing. . Within 20 minutes, he was captured while attempting to conceal the purpose of three surveillance cameras before closing the system.
And over the next few days, prosecutors said that he had made a series of suspicious trips to the city, according to images from WMUR-TV. He bought cleaning products from a Walmart. He went to see a priest and he did not have one but two breakdowns that led him to the hospital, the prosecutor said.
Verrill was arrested the day after his trip to Massachusetts for an addiction treatment program on Feb. 5, the Rochester Voice newspaper reported.
When executing a search warrant, Mr. Strong stated that the women's bodies were concealed under the tarpaulin and that the knives had been buried under the floor in a flannel shirt. The police found a spade smeared with blood, presumably by Sullivan, on the porch.
And in the kitchen, of course, they found Alexa and put the device in custody.
The case recalls an investigation into a murder committed in Arkansas in 2015 in which a woman had been found dead in a hot tub in the yard after the man who lived there, Nate Bates, invited friends to watch a football match. Bates was soon accused of his death and pleaded not guilty.
As in the New Hampshire case, the police found Alexa sitting on the kitchen counter of Bates, suspecting her of something.
Amazon initially resisted the efforts of the security forces to obtain the relevant records, The post office reported in December 2016. In a 91-page submission, Amazon requested the cancellation of the search warrant on the ground of the first amendment. He had advanced the same argument advanced by Apple in 2015, when the company rejected the federal government's request to unlock the iPhone of the accused shooter San Bernardino for confidentiality reasons.
"Amazon does not seek to obstruct a lawful investigation, but to protect the privacy rights of its customers when the government solicits their data from Amazon, particularly when such data may include a expressive content protected by the First Amendment, "writes Amazon c & rsquo; is brief.
Amazon eventually gave way after Bates authorized the search of its Amazon Echo – but prosecutors hoped to be the expected pillar: they dropped the lawsuit against Bates in November 2017 after finding evidence, including reasonable explanation "of the death of the victim.
Technology companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its device "Home" are what a recent magazine article Harvard Law Review called "surveillance intermediaries" – "entities that lie between the law enforcement agencies and the personal information of the public and who have the power to decide how easy or difficult it will be for the forces of law enforcement. order to access this information ".
According to the article, there have been more than 32,000 inquiries by law enforcement forces to Facebook only during a six-month period in 2017.
"Intermediaries must comply with the statutory and constitutional laws governing requests for information from law enforcement officials," the article states, "they still have wide discretion when dealing with such requests: discretionary power to assess the legality of requests, slow down the process by emphasizing proceduralism and minimize their ability to respond to legal demands by implementing encryption. "
The Verrill case must be judged in May 2019.
[ad_2]
Source link
