One of our traffic investigators is currently working a fatality involving a cell phone. Driver of vehicle A crosses the centerline and hits vehicle B. The end result was that two people die in vehicle B.
The initial story from the driver of vehicle A is that he was utilizing some sort of GPS function on his phone, dropped the phone, then leaned over to get the phone and drifted over the centerline. The investigator has reason to believe that the driver was in the process of reading a text message.
One major problem for the investigator is that we do not currently have the phone, but we believe we can get it with a Search Warrant. At present the only thing I know about the phone is that the father said the service was through Verizon and that he believed the phone was a droid.
I know that much of what I am asking depends on the make, model and OS of the phone, but without that information I still need to ask this question
Do some of the newer smart phones, possibly “droids” in any way track when an SMS message was opened up on the device? Let’s just say the message was opened up only one time would there be a last accessed date?
I have the times from Verizon that the messages were sent. I just need to know when they were read.
I apologize for not having more information.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I went back and looked at some Verizon CDRs I am working on right now and I noted that the text messages for the most part showed a MSG_SND_DT_TM and MSG_DLVR_DT_TM with the same time BUT there were variations from sent and received also, sometimes as long as 30 minutes to two or three hours.
I don't fully know your case but would there be a difference in prosecution if the person was distracted by his cell phone reading a GPS image as opposed to texting? I would think they would both be counted as a distraction that possibly caused this fatality.
Just thinking out loud here, good luck with the case.
Ed
There is experience that text messages may have been sent days earlier than the date of receipt
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Greg
Cowboy,
I don’t know what the difference is between looking at his GPS or looking at a text other than to say that if he were texting, which includes typing, sending or reading, he would be in violation of State Law. Either way I believe you could safely say “distracted driving” was or may have been a contributing factor?
I’ve obtained SMS records from Verizon approximately 25 times. Of those times I have always received content and the reports I have received come in what I would refer to as their “default” content format. I know that you can also receive an SMS log with no content, but I have never seen one of these reports.
In the upper left hand corner of the content report you will see three times. I have listed an example below which has nothing to do with the case I was asked about.
Log Written 04/24/2010 141629
Message arrival 04/24/2010 141621
Final Disposition 04/24/2010 141629
I called Verizon and one of their LERT members advised me the “Message Arrival” time equates to the time the originating switch that receives the SMS gets it. Log Written equates to some sort of formatting, or internal documentation within the Verizon system. Final Disposition is when the originating switch sends out the SMS message through the Verizon system to be delivered to the receiving device. To my knowledge Verizon does not track the time the handset receives the message. If anyone knows this to be different, please educate me.
Many of the records I have show the three times listed above to be exactly the same. Without further investigation I can only assume that, sometimes, the time it takes the SMS to arrive, be Written and Disposed of takes thousandths of a second where the times they give you are only carried out to the hundredths column?
Minutes after I posted this question on several forums and to several people I was contacted by our State lab. It is my understanding that Viaforensics has a forensic suite/software that works quite well on the Android platform and that “sometimes” the timestamp of when an SMS was opened can be retrieved.
I saw some SMS records the father of the driver provided LE. They indicate he received three messages at 506 PM. At this point I don’t really know what “He received” means. Is it his handset, originating switch, etc? The accident was reported at 507 PM. All I can say at this point is that the times need to be examined further. If the above times are accurate there are potentially 120 seconds of time that need to be accounted for and I find this all quite interesting. I also believe establishing reasonable doubt will be quite easy, but I guess that’s what they make Jury’s for.
Ed,
That was going to my next suggestion, request his CDRs, research his possible texting partners, request their CDRs and see if you can indentify a SMS conversation taking place (back and forth so on) during the time of the accident.
I was wondering if your texting laws were for just that, texting, and not a general distraction while driving.
"Burden of proof" is a bear.
Good luck Sir,