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So like, I understand that these people and their lawyers are just trying to find a way to stay out of prison, but it's still absolutely stunning to me that anybody can say with a straight face that a bunch of folks who all showed up at the same place at the same time wearing the same thing carrying loaded rifles and explosives, who then all participated in throwing those explosives at a bunch of police officers, were actually a bunch of totally unrelated individuals with completely independent and totally legal motives after one of them shot a police officer. Like yeah, I get it, you want to put up the best legal defense you can and you can't exactly admit that you were knowingly organizing terrorism, but who are they actually expecting to buy that?
Give a fig leaf so a sympathetic juror can do some jury nullification?
I suppose one of the major mistakes these people made, in terms of getting away with their crimes, was committing them in Texas where a jury of their peers will consist entirely of Texans.
The first mistake was committing the crimes in the first place. The second mistake was using electronic communications to discuss their crimes. Committing them in a jurisdiction where the jury might not be as sympathetic as it could be is pretty far down the list.
Zoomer criminals just leave the damn phone at home challenge [IMPOSSIBLE!!!].
Leaving your phone at home can also be presented as evidence of intent to commit a crime, especially if your usual pattern is to carry it with you everywhere. This has been successfully presented as circumstantial evidence by prosecutors at trial in various cases.
I think the argument is intended to be that since you carry your phone everywhere and the phone was at home, you must have been too.
If the intent is to use the phone as an alibi based on location data, the issue is that modern phones track a lot more than just rough location. Eg. unlock/lock events, movement, checking notifications, etc. For a habitual phone user, a gap of a few hours with absolutely no activity in the middle of the day looks pretty odd. Especially when a digital forensics expert could compare it to the pattern of life for the last six months or something.
And if they get any indication that the suspect left their house (eg. vehicle GPS, red light camera, neighbor's Ring camera) now they are caught lying, plus leaving the phone at home looks like preparation for an illegal act.
I'm not saying that leaving your phone at home makes it the perfect crime. People were convicted of crimes long before smartphones. All the things you mention, and several others, could come into play, or they couldn't, and even if they did, trying to make those arguments requires more inferences on the part of the jury than having phone GPS data putting you directly at the scene.
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