Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler has increasingly focused over the past three years on technology and innovation in prosecutorial work.
The first catalyst was the 2019 criminal justice reform mandating prosecutors to turn over evidence much faster, which awakened him to the importance of technology and spurred his office to go paperless at the beginning of the following year.
Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and his office doubled down on investment in technology to accommodate remote work, virtual hearings, and other new ways of doing business.
In July, the technological transformation at Mr. Hoovler’s office reached a new milestone: the creation of a new digital forensic unit—one of the first of its kind at a district attorney’s office outside New York City.
“The digital evidence that we are getting today is so massive, so pervasive, and so useful that we have to have our own unit here at the district attorney’s office in order to support the 31 municipal police agencies in Orange County,” Mr. Hoovler told The Epoch Times.
The initial investment in software and equipment—including a high-power air conditioner for cooling the intensively running digital systems—cost about $500,000, a sum that took him three years to build up.
Mr. Hoovler said he could not have done it without the dedication of his investigative staff now working at the new unit: P.J. Weissinger, Brett Weeden, and Tom Reinle.
“They came to me, and they had a vision for it,” he said. “If I didn’t have three guys that were interested in doing this stuff every day, every minute, I probably wouldn’t have it.”
The three staff members have a combined 1,500 hours of digital forensic training under their belt.
Digital Pattern of Life
As people spend time on digital products, they leave behind traces of thoughts and actions on their smartphones, tablets, and computers, which can be used both to solve crimes and to prove innocence.Of the cases going through Mr. Hoovler’s office, 3 out of 4 now entail some form of digital evidence.
“The smartphone is one of the greatest investigative tools we have,” Mr. Hoovler said. “We can reconstruct your life based on the information on your phone to help us solve crimes.
“It tells us who you’ve called, where you’ve been, what you buy on the internet, and we do look at everything that you’ve searched online.”
Cell phone data show that in the days leading up to the tragic death, Mr. Sellers searched for advice on dealing with a toddler and explanations for a young man wanting to hurt a child. Soon his cell phone searches progressed to topics about getting hit in the head, head trauma for a 3-year-old, and a baby breathing heavily.
Mr. Weeden said that a breakaway from one’s usual life pattern could also be a crucial clue.
“If every day at 10 p.m. you are on your phone, but all of a sudden, your phone was off for two hours on a day during a period when a homicide occurred, that may not be the absolute proof that you did the crime, but it is an absolute lead in solving it,” he said.
Smartphone data make up the most significant chunk of evidence handled by the digital forensic unit, with about 65 of them sitting in the evidence box; the team operates on a first-come, first-served basis, but crimes such as murders and sex offenses are top priorities at all times.
When suspects are unwilling to give away their phone passcodes, investigators must use specialized software to break into phones forcibly, a process that can take days, weeks, or even months.
As for digital data on a victim’s phone obtained through consent, prosecutors take special care in excluding their private information before turning it over to the defense attorney, according to Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Borek.
More Tools in the Box
As cars get smarter, their infotainment systems store data about a driver’s daily habits—digital evidence that the unit will be able to process too.Mr. Hoovler is in the process of purchasing top-of-the-line equipment capable of taking three-dimensional pictures of crime scenes, which the staff will operate at the digital forensic unit.
The equipment will spare victims of the dreadful experience of having the defense attorneys and defendants come back to their homes to collect evidence—a procedure allowed under state discovery law—as its images can reproduce the entire interior, according to Mr. Borek.
The digital forensic unit is affiliated with the New York State Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and will take on more proactive investigations.
“We are going to start actively looking for people committing the horrendous crime in Orange County—such as [by having] an investigator posing as a 12-year-old girl online, and see what comes to us,” Mr. Hoovler said.
To keep up with the ever-changing technology, Mr. Hoovler said he would continue to build up the money to purchase updated software, newer equipment, and advanced training.
“It is like cat and mouse,” he said. “We are always trying to catch up.”
Record Management System
Beyond the digital forensic unit, Mr. Hoovler said his ultimate goal in technological transformation is to build a countywide record management system linking all law enforcement agencies with his office.“Imagine a wheel, and each individual spoke is a police department with the district attorney’s office at the center,” he said. “Everything flows into my office, but at the same time, all those police departments can communicate with each other and know what they are doing.
“It would be smart for the City of Middletown to know what the City of Newburgh is doing and for the Town of Montgomery to know what the Town of Wallkill is doing,” he said.
The system will enhance work efficiency among agencies, boost intelligence sharing for preventing or solving crime, and aid data collection and trend analysis, he said.
No such system currently exists outside New York City, according to Mr. Hoovler, who served as the president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York in 2020.
Mr. Hoovler was first elected to a four-year term as district attorney of Orange County in 2013 and is currently serving his third term.
Before his latest shift to technology and innovation, he focused on establishing community-based programs in his early years in office, including community cameras, immigrant affairs coordination, drug awareness, hate crime prevention, and support for victims of domestic violence.
