Idaho Trial Court Records

If you are looking for Idaho State Trial Court records, the Idaho State Judiciary has made records for misdemeanors and felonies available online. Records are available from 1995 forward and include records of conviction, docket sheets, judgment information, and other information for all forty-four counties of Idaho. The information is free and is a good starting place when looking for criminal history records from Idaho.

TOR Website Indictments

The DEA released a press release in connection with USDOJ in California that it has indicted several people in the on-line TOR network controlled substances website. The operation, "Atom Bomb", included eight named and seven unnamed conspirators. The twelve count indictment charges that each of the defendants was a member of a conspiracy to distribute a variety of controlled substances worldwide through the use of online marketplaces that allowed independent sources of supply to anonymously advertise illegal drugs for sale to the public. The drug network, "The Farmer's Market", sold all types of controlled substances in all fifty states and twenty-four countries to over three thousand people(!) The "Farmer's Market" was running on the TOR network. TOR is described by the Government as follows:

According to the indictment, TOR is a circuit of encrypted connections through relays on the TOR network that can be downloaded on home computers. TOR allows websites and electronic mail communications to mask IP address information by spreading communications over a series of computers, or relays, located throughout the world.

TOR is described by itself as:

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Of interest is the investigation issues presented in a federal investigation of this type. First reported on in Rolling Stone, TOR which was allegedly used to provide privacy for its users on the online drug market was operating "above the radar" but is designed to allow people to be on the internet without leaving trails like Hansel and Gretel. It will be interesting to see what develops...stay tuned.

Photo Line-Up Subject to Challenge

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The piece above ran on MSNBC this week on Rock Center. The program calls into serious question the reliability of the photo line-up, or "six-pack". The ten-minute segment focuses on Tim Cole, an African American Texas A & M student who was wrongfully convicted of aggravated rape in 1985. The only evidence against Mr. Cole was that he was chosen as a suspect in a photo line-up. He was placed in the photo line-up when a campus police officer decided that he resembled the composite drawing done by police. There was no other evidence against Mr. Cole yet he was convicted. Almost twenty years later, another man confessed to the rape which was confirmed by DNA but it was too late for Mr. Cole. He had passed away in prison as the result of a severe asthma attack after spending thirteen years of his twenty-five year sentence. He was posthumously exonerated by the State of Texas.

MSNBC has a photo montage test you can take on their website to get some idea of the reliability of a photo line up. Remember, however, that most people that are victims of crimes are undergoing an extremely stressful moment during the crimes which impacts the ability to recognize a person. Additionally, as noted in the MSNBC clip, the photo montage or any line up can be tainted by the police officers running the line up. If the officers have a certain "suspect" in mind, they may (accidentally or on purpose) project their preconceived notions on the victim. Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest cause of wrongful conviction and was at play in more than 75% of cases of individuals exonerated with DNA according to the Innocence Project. Both the MSNBC page and the Innocence Project have resources for challenging an eyewitness ID and suggestions on reform.

Options for investigating a case involving an eyewitness ID include getting an expert on reliability and memory including the reliability of the montage or creating your own montage. Additionally, it is important to get all discovery surrounding the montage including: why your person was selected to be placed in the montage to begin with, how the montage was created (software random selection or by officer selection), whether it was a "blind" montage meaning the officer conducting the show-up did not know anything about the "suspect" or the crime, and how many montages were shown to the suspect. Also if there is video or a recording of the victim selecting the suspect, that information is important. The circumstances of the line-up can be of critical importance including how long after the crime the line-up is happening, whether there has already been other "memory contamination", and whether there have been previous attempts of a line up before the "suspect" is picked.

In Mr. Cole's case, the victim tells MSNBC the horror she feels that she picked out the wrong person and she identifies the subtle police suggestion as a factor. The victim was highly motivated to pick out the correct suspect so that the horrible rape she experienced would not happen to someone else and her assailant would be punished. But it is exactly this pressure that can lead to a bad identification. Social scientists to study eyewitness identification issues note that there is tremendous pressure on the victim to pick the suspect and therefore they are extremely vulnerable to "clues" presented by law enforcement officers. Suggestions for reform include the "blind" test mentioned earlier and showing photos one at a time. Both of these methods have been shown to decrease the problems associated with eyewitness identification.