September 26, 2020 | By Kay Stephens
Jury permitted to hear about use of GPS, cellphone data during upcoming trial
HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Blair County jury will be permitted to hear testimony about the use of cellphone records, plus GPS and Facebook data, to draw conclusions about Michael D. Copley’s alleged whereabouts on Dec. 9 and 10, 2015, the night his wife went missing.
Judge Wade A. Kagarise, in a recent ruling, denied a motion seeking to exclude testimony about Copley’s alleged location for lack of supportive details on how computerized software can be used to render conclusions about a location.
Kagarise said he believes the testimony about Copley’s location, as rendered during a June 23 pretrial hearing, reflected “sufficient reliability” based on the expertise and training of James L. Wigley, a U.S. Secret Service investigating analyst who testified.
Defense attorney Richard Corcoran, at that June 23 hearing, told Kagarise that Wigley’s testimony shouldn’t be permitted. Because neither Wigley nor any other witness offered testimony about how the software works, Corcoran said Copley will be disadvantaged in contesting the criminal homicide, aggravated assault, burglary, criminal trespass and related charges filed against him.
Copley is charged with the death of his 29-year-old wife, Catherine Copley. In June 2016, about six months after Catherine Copley was reported missing, her body was found in a garage behind a vacant house on the 400 block of East Pleasant Valley Boulevard. Through a review of cellphone records, plus Facebook and GPS data, investigators concluded that Michael Copley was in the area of the garage on the night his wife disappeared.
During the June pretrial hearing, Wigley testified about his review of the cellphone data and its link to cell towers and wireless internet sites.
Wigley said the data confirmed that Michael Copley’s cellphone was in or near the Altoona garage where her body was later found.
During the hearing, Wigley mentioned a margin of error with this kind of data, and Kagarise acknowledged that in his ruling.
The defense, Kagarise said, is free to cross-examine Wigley on that margin and if desired, to call its own expert witness to counter Wigley.
The judge also acknowledged that Wigley has 25 years in law enforcement and specialized training in the use of software to compile and analyze digital records.
“The defense is alleging that (Wigley) has insufficient knowledge about the way Facebook and Google operate and therefore, he should not be able to testify to the location services evidence,” Kagarise wrote.
“However,” the judge continued, “this court believes that sufficient evidence was presented at the June 23, 2020, hearing to draw a conclusion that not only is the proffered evidence not novel, it is also based on sufficient reliability and based on the proposed expert’s specialized training and knowledge.”
The judge also suggested that jurors will be able to follow Wigley’s testimony based upon their own understanding of cellphones.
Online court records show that Copley has been in the Blair County Prison since March 29, 2018, when he was arrested for assault, an offense leading to a minimum of nine months in prison. Because police filed homicide charges against Copley in October 2018, he has remained in county prison.
Read the original article at AltoonaMirror.com HERE.
