Police Blotter: Google searches lead to murder conviction

Police Blotter is a regular CNET News report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Florida man appeals a first-degree murder conviction based on circumstantial evidence, including Google searches related to gunshot wounds.

When: State appeals court rules on January 23, 2009.

Outcome: Appeal denied and conviction upheld.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
On the evening of August 17, 2002, Justin Barber was shot four times while walking on a deserted beach in Florida. Bullets hit his left hand, his left shoulder, the base of his neck, and his chest. His wife April was shot in the face and died in the surf.

From his hospital bed, Justin offered detectives a description of the man he says robbed and shot them. Witnesses told police they saw a second car parked on the beach around the same time as the shooting. And April's car and house (the couple was temporarily living three hours apart for job reasons) had been recently broken into.

Still, April's family believed Justin was the man who murdered her--then shot himself to cover up the crime--and tried to focus detectives' attention on him.

An article posted on our sister site, CBS News, offers some explanations for their suspicions. A $2 million life insurance policy had been taken out on both Justin and April. Justin was more than $50,000 in debt. He was having affairs, including one with a woman who worked at a car rental agency.

April's aunt Patty, a judge in Oklahoma, was convinced that Justin was the culprit. "He planned every moment of it," she told CBS News. "This was premeditated, cold, calculated." Detectives eventually agreed, and Justin was charged with first-degree murder.

What makes this case relevant to Police Blotter is that prosecutors introduced something of a bombshell during the trial: Records of Justin's Google searches.

A physical search of Justin's computer revealed that a few months before the murder, he had searched for terms including "trauma, cases, gunshot, right chest" and "Florida & divorce." Prosecutors had also discovered that the defendant downloaded a suggestive Guns N' Roses song called "Used to Love Her" and then deleted it a few weeks later, after his wife's death.

The lyrics: "I used to love her, but I had to kill her / I had to put her / Six feet under / And I can still hear her complain."

The jury convicted Justin and he was sentenced to life in prison. He appealed on grounds that the evidence was wholly circumstantial and insufficient for conviction. A Florida state appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence.

As computer forensics becomes more commonplace, evidence of Google and other searches is beginning to appear in more criminal prosecutions. Earlier this month, Police Blotter noted how they were invoked in the case of a San Francisco-area investment banker who claimed he believed he killed a deer instead of a person.

Police Blotter has chronicled a 2006 case involving a wireless hacker ("how to broadcast interference over Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz") and a 2008 case involving a woman convicted of murdering her husband ("decomposition of a body in water"). Searches in a 2005 murder case included "neck," "snap," and "break."

So far these cases appear to have involved police physically seizing a suspect's computer and poring over its Web browser history. The other way for prosecutors or defense attorneys to find search terms is to send subpoenas to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL (something that the major search companies say they can provide if legally obligated). If you know of any cases involving subpoenas, please let us know.

Excerpts from the opinion of the District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District:
In the penalty phase of the trial, the State presented argument in support of the three statutory aggravators; Barber refused to offer mitigating evidence or submit argument. The jury, by a vote of eight to four, recommended that the death penalty be imposed.

The trial court considered the evidence and the State's arguments and found: (1) the murder was at least partially motivated by pecuniary gain (medium weight); and (2) the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner (great weight). However, as to whether the crime was heinous, atrocious, and cruel (H.A.C.), the court found that the State did not prove this aggravator beyond a reasonable doubt because the State did not sufficiently prove that Barber attempted to drown his wife before he shot her. Specifically, the trial court found that Barber may have shot her at the water's edge, causing her to fall into the water, and then dragged her to where her body was found by the police. Despite the jury's recommendation, the trial court imposed a life sentence. Barber appeals, claiming that the trial court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal...

As to our de novo review of the record before us, we conclude that when viewed in the light most favorable to the State, the evidence the State introduced at trial is inconsistent with Barber's theory of events. Because such an inconsistency was established, the trial court correctly let the jury decide whether the evidence excluded all reasonable hypotheses of innocence. The jury heard all of the testimony and considered all of the evidence presented in the guilt phase of the trial and determined that all reasonable hypotheses of innocence were excluded. Concluding that substantial, competent evidence exists in the record to support the jury's verdict, we affirm Barber's conviction and his sentence.

[van_Zeller]

He shot *himself* four times? In the neck and in the chest? He must be some kind of close-range marksman, if he managed not to kill himself!

[Dalkorian]

The neck and chest wounds seem implausible to me as well. Pretty risky behavior just to make yourself look innocent!

[Penguinisto]

Err, if you shoot yourself, you'd have powder residue all over your hands from holding the pistol, surf be damned. That, and shooting yourself four times isn't exactly something that one would consider easy to do...

Sure the Google searches are quite damning, but I'm sincerely hoping that it wasn't the only (or even key) evidence used to convict the guy - otherwise someone wanting to pin a murder merely has to get access to the scapegoat's computer (not an impossible thing to do, y'know?)

[i8246i]

O_o

I'm a bit leery over using Google search history as evidence. It sounds like there was other evidence that helped convict this guy...but I hope that the jury didn't SERIOUSLY consider conviction based on some guns&roses song and a few google results!

This article needs more information posted from the original trial, and the investigations made by the police to collect evidence against this man. I especially want to know if his computer was password-protected, if he ever let anyone else touch the machine, if he bought the laptop new/used, etc. Otherwise, it looks like the convicted man was given an unfair trial.

You always hear about the cases where the evidence perfectly matches the criminal...but you also hear about the cases where the evidence was tampered with or placed...where certain evidence wasn't collected, or the technology used to collect the evidence is outdated or inaccurate..

And then an innocent man spends decades of his life in jail...or is put to death.

[IVuAN]

I don't know if he is innocent or guilty but I don't think there's that much evidence to put him in jail.

I know investigations and all the things that have to do with law can take a lot of peoples time and life just to determine if a man is guilty or not, but all this processes are made because they're supposedly trying to make justice not just trying to find someone guilty. What I'm trying to say is, you try to put someone in jail to prevent him/her from doing harm to others in the future and make the person pay and consider what he/her have done, not for searching a scapegoat so that we can see they're doing their job jailing people.

If he's innocent hope he's set free and the murderer is found, if he's really guilty justice will be made.

[Dr_Zinj]

Not enough evidence in the article to warrant his conviction.

Again, misleading, biased, yellow journalism with article title concerning google search data and legal convictions.

Search engine evidence is circumstantial only. I look up explosives, bioagents, and weapons all the time. That doesn't mean I'm planning to murder any one.

[declan00]

"Again, misleading, biased, yellow journalism?" Hardly. How about: an accurate representation of what the prosecution argued. If you don't like it, take it up with the prosecution, not the journalist.

What's the term for misleading, biased, ill-mannered reader?

[Noneyabeeswax]

He must be superhuman if he could stand the pain after the first shot, to shoot himself three more times. I would have hung the jury, I'm afraid. I could not, and would not, convict anyone based on internet searches. If they had hard evidence that's one thing, but thousands of people probably search for the same things every day.

Without hard evidence the internet searches don't mean squat. You can search all day long for anything you like and it doesn't make you guilty of a crime. Yeah, it's kind of coincidental, but the searches in and of themselves do NOT prove guilt. And anyone who convicts someone of such a serious crime on such flimsy evidence needs their heads examined.

[myles taylor]

I think that what a lot of the commenters are missing is that you weren't the jury, the prosecution, the defense, or the judge. You're seeing one tiny part of the defense and then making a decision based on that. I'm sure there was other evidence, especially if it held up in appeals court. He has motive, opportunity, and while the evidence that it was premeditated was slightly circumstantial, it was still there and add that in with the other evidence and it gives you a clear picture. Don't second-guess the jury and judge before getting all the facts.

Sounds a bit like an episode of CSI. In fact, I can't remember if I saw a similar episode or if I read about this earlier and that's why it sounded familiar.

[diddyfx]

Don't let it go to trail...

economy getting worse and crime increases; people are going to depend more on gut and emotion and less on facts. SO... you can get convicted with circumstantial evidence.

you see the outcome... forget fingerprints, murder weapon, gunshot residue, witnesses, and forensic evidence; all it takes is he did it and could gain from it.

GUILTY!

[donnie0526]

and the article doesn't speak about real forensic evidence, ie, the caliber of the guns used in the murder and his injuries... are the they same gun? where is the murder weapon, etc...

[uglo]

I would think now with all of this coming to light if a person searched for ways to kill a person and that person is found dead; then the killer should totally get rid of his computer prior to the act.

[willdryden]

I agree that there is much left out. If the searches were only intoduced in the penalty phase of the trial, they could be well justified. If however they were introduced during the guilt phase as it seams they were, there could be some issue. I would like more on the medical condition (blood loss, trauma inflicted, angle of bullet entry, caliber of the bullet) and information on powder residue (if any) around the wounds. A single gun does nothing for or againt the case. If he owned a gun of the correct caliber and it was missing, that would hurt his case.

I have to agree that we were not on the Jury. There is too much missing from the article to make a judgement. Can we get the case number so we can look up the trial transcripts?

[declan00]

"There is too much missing from the article to make a judgement..." That's why the article links to two other reports. You _did_ follow those links, right?