The macabre e-evidence against Cho

Having just arrived from a medical checkup and vacation with my family, I witnessed a blow-by-blow account of the Virginia Tech Massacre soon after it started to happen. I guess it’s an old story by now, but to watch it live and to listen to American TV analyze the developing events — especially the photos that the young Korean student electronically developed and premeditatedly sent to the American authorities in order for his motives to be broadcast to the world — evoked feelings of horror and shock that came after disbelief.

I witnessed how Hans Durzy, spokesman for eBay, said that Seung-Hui Cho, being a "lonely loner of a student," had left a trail of e-evidence from the time he purchased ammunition clips a month before the massacre, suited for one of the two handguns he used in the killing rampage on the school campus, where he killed 32 students.

The online auction site listed the date of the purchase of the clips as March 22, about three weeks before the attack. The day after, he purchased gun accessories from a vendor named "Oneclickshooting" that deals online.

In procuring e-evidence, according to Durzy, it is easier and more fruitful if the perpetrator of the crime is a loner "where life with his computer is more intense," hence making the search on his computer more fertile, so that search warrants were requested in order to be able to examine Cho’s e-mail accounts, which included his address: blazer550@hotmail.com.

The failure of preliminary efforts to reach the Idaho dealer, however, led to a more incisive look into the eBay-affiliated site where Cho’s purchases proved to be very enlightening, such as books titled The Best of HP Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre; Men, Women and Chainsaws, which takes a look at the gender dimension in horror films; and a familiar book by Joyce Carol Oates, The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense. Books like these were used to assess the kind of mind-set Cho was in before the massacre he executed with great premeditation.

Very definitely, Cho’s computer held a record of almost everything he had done and of his activities and communications, made more fertile, as I said earlier, because the guy was a pathetic loner. If he doesn’t talk to any person around him, it follows that he’s got to talk to his computer.

E-evidence was in full swing in the investigation of the circumstances that led to the worst massacre in US history. The conclusions achieved certainly made good use of e-evidence. Courts have concluded that Internet data have become so commonplace, however, that standard operating procedures for lawsuits should involve some type of e-evidence collection. They have also categorized e-evidence as different from paper evidence.

In most jurisdictions, a person may authenticate a piece of writing or an invoice by proving that he or she recognizes the signature as that of the author and that the paper document has not been tainted. In the event a party declines to admit that he or she is the author of an e-mail, the conventional paper authentication process is not applicable, and this is particularly true if the e-mail came from an e-mail account other than the one associated with the alleged e-authors.

There is another difference between e-evidence and traditional evidence, and this is the enduring nature of e-evidence. Conventional evidence, particularly records, typically reside in a single physical location. In order to destroy paper records, they can be thrown away or shredded. To destroy e-evidence, the procedure is not so easy. Contrary to popular belief, hitting the "delete" button does not destroy Internet information — it merely makes it temporarily inaccessible to the party who pressed the "delete" button. Even computer hard-disk files are not normally destroyed when the "delete" button is hit; the computer simply identifies the deleted files as space that can be overwritten with new information. For litigation purposes, evidence authentication comes down to simplistically proving that an exhibit is what it purports to be.

The cornerstone of authentication has been the identification of the exhibit by the offering witness on the basis of distinct characteristics by which the witness can recognize the exhibit. In doing so, the exhibit can be proven to be what its proponent claims it is. Thanks to years of experience, tangible items can be processed with ease. Internet evidence may take a little longer.

I think it is advisable for lawyers to instruct clients to inventory potential sources of e-evidence. It is also recommended to establish e-data and e-database management policies. This particular policy should include guidelines for the preservation and destruction of various types of data. Clients should be advised of the curious characteristics of e-data and e-databases, particularly e-mail.

Seung-Hui Cho, aware of the enduring and expansive nature of e-evidence — hitting the entire world with one click of the button — gave a macabre message. Having become deranged because of what he called the "debauchery and deceitfulness" around him, he thus sought the attention of the world through his sordid message of destruction.

Macabre e-evidence delivered the message.

* * *

Thanks for your e-mail sent to jtl@pldtdsl.net.