Mobile Phones – Forensic Science Units No Longer Adequate

Mobile phones and electronic devices are not only more prevalent in society, but are now crucial to a number of cases coming before the criminal courts.

Keith Rennison explains “A report by Gillian Tully, the government-appointed regulator, states that police forensic science units no longer have the resources to deliver services to the required standards. There are simply too many cases involving phones and each smart phone can provide, in certain cases, upto 250,000 pages of evidence. At DRN, we are not completely reliant on the police. We can instruct our own independent experts to bypass the finite resources of the police and investigate our own priorities such as text messages, photographs, location, emails etc.”

Nick Cassidy continues “We have recently conducted two cases at opposite ends of the severity spectrum, where telephone evidence was crucial. The first one, on conviction, could have attracted a sentence of many years. Our client was adamant that his mobile phone had evidence on it, that would not only confirm his account but discredit prosecution witnesses. We obtained funding, had the phone examined and ultimately persuaded the Crown Prosecution Service to discontinue the case.”

“The second case was a driving matter where the loss of his licence would have rendered our client unemployed. We were able to locate the client’s whereabouts over a five hour period to discount the prosecution version of events. Again the Crown Prosecution Service were happy to consider the further evidence and an alternative plea was offered and accepted.”

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