Help Me Help You – Working with Criminal Defense Teams

Criminal defense teams find CSAM cases some of the hardest cases to deal with. Sometimes Defendants can go through a handful of teams. And let’s take a moment, just a moment for the victims. Cheers to you all and cheers to so much tragically necessary, BUT IMPORTANT work. These cases contain digital forensic evidence. Most attorneys don’t understand and hire experts. But criminal defense teams are catching up and using digital forensics programs to better represent our clients. This looks like identifying exculpatory evidence, mitigating evidence, and in many cases, identifying additional inculpating evidence that would likely be brought out in trial. (Give a few examples of real world instances where forensic anslysis tools have saved great expense, mitigated evidence and helped to settle cases). Clients can be confused when confronted with an FTK report with broken links to santized images. It’s not easy to understand. Sometimes our clients are not tech-saavy and need to be shown and be carefully explained the digital evidence against them. With access to the portable case, I can organize data, tag and bookmark. We can share with our clients the strength or weaknesses of the digital evidence. Sometimes evidence that we want to use in sentencing or an exhibit for trial needs to be located. Parties can work together to ensure that Defendant’s have access to all the evidence. This looks like time in the computer lab reviewing evidence. For defense teams that have forensic software, this is easier. Other teams may need to spend more time in the lab. Let’s make sure the clients understand the evidence against them. Encourage more public defense entities to train investigators in programs like Magnet AXIOM.