Ride the Lightning

DATA RECOVERY HELPS CONVICT RAPIST

December 15, 2008

At the worst moments, technology sometimes chooses to fail us. On December 11th, it was reported that the recovery of data from a damaged DVD helped to convict a California man of multiple rapes. Michael Barnes was never a poster child for law abiding citizens -  a 41-year-old convicted kidnapper, he had been charged with a raping a woman while on parole.

Actually, three women accused Barnes of rape. Unfortunately, one of the victims’ original police interview was on a DVD that had become unreadable. When the judge ruled that she could not testify at trial because of disputes over her original testimony, prosecutors did not have enough evidence to build a case for multiple counts of rape without the DVD evidence.

Two local firms said the DVD was unrecoverable, which just proves that there is data recovery and data recovery. Seagate Recovery Services found there was damage to the lead-in section of the data so that normal playing software could not get past the beginning. Once Seagate extracted an image of the data from the DVD, it was able to repair the damaged lead-in portion of the DVD, making the data – which had always been intact – viewable.

With the restoration of the DVD, prosecutors charged Barnes with multiple rapes involving three different women. Barnes was sentenced to 24 years in prison on December 5th after pleading guilty in the face of the evidence.

Hat tip to Dan Fuller for forwarding this story.

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