NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Smile! You’re On Cellphone Camera.
Detectives and District Attorneys alike are increasingly relying on camera-phone photos to solve cases and win convictions. The photos aren’t being taken by concerned citizens on Neighborhood Watch patrols. They are being taken by the criminals themselves, reports The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):
In the small city of Nashua, N.H., one prosecutor estimates that cellphone photos provide useful evidence 40 or 50 times a year. …
"We pray for those kinds of cases," says Debra Collins, an assistant state attorney in New Britain, Conn. Last spring, Ms. Collins obtained guilty pleas from two young men who had used a friend's camera phone to record one of them igniting a car by tossing fireworks into an open window. …
University of Cincinnati criminal-law professor Mark Godsey, who writes a blog called CrimProfLaw, says suspects give up their constitutional protection against self-incrimination when their own camera phones show them breaking the law. "They do it voluntarily. No one is making them," he says.
But wait. It gets better: Not content with capturing themselves for posterity in flagrante delicato some geniuses go the next step and brag about their exploits by posting their photos on MySpace and other social networking Web sites.
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