Last update: June 19 at 12:20 am

Main Points of the Day

The defense presented Honduran lawyer, Jonathan Murillo, to testify as an expert on the topic of cellular data extraction. Murillo extracted data from the LG phone seized by investigative police, including police officer Juan Carlos Cruz (who testified on day 40 and is accused of falsifying evidence). The LG phone contained an audio file that was recovered from protected witnesses in Santa Barbara referring to murdering a woman because she opposed a dam (tiene que reventar esa señora … se opone a un central). Murillo testified that the chain of custody of the LG phone, once in police custody, had been violated and audio files had been deleted and were impossible to recover. It appears that the purpose of his testimony was to advance the defense’s argument that Berta faced threats from other sources and to raise questions about how the investigators handled evidence and made decisions to not explore this line of investigation and it’s relevance to Berta’s murder. There was no mention of David Castillo whatsoever in this analysis.
Trial is convened for tomorrow at 9 am.

More Details

NOTE: The live transmission cut out every minute for approximately 15 minutes at the beginning of this presentation.

[NOTE: This defense strategy seems confusing and far-fetched. There was no mention of David Castillo in this analysis. It was focused on an LG phone found by a police team but it is still unclear who the phone belonged to.]
Honduran lawyer Jonathan Murillo presents a data extraction report conducted on an LG phone that a Honduran police investigative team (including two police accused of falsifying evidence) obtained as part of an investigation on what they claim had to do with individuals with information about Berta’s murder.
The LG phone was analyzed and it was found that there were 395 audios on it - 66 had been erased or eliminated and were recovered during the extraction. Murillo determined that once the cell phone was in police custody, the phone was still being used and files were deleted.
Murillo testified to have found three audio files eliminated on April 4th but he was unable to recover because according to the data extraction tool, the files were 0 Gbs, suggesting that they may have been intentionally deleted.

QUESTIONS FROM THE DEFENSE:

Q: What training do you have to do these extractions? A: I’m a lawyer with a Masters in Criminality from the University of Barcelona. I’m trained in Cellbrite (data extraction software or tool) and have a diploma given by the Spanish police.
Q: How long did the extraction take? A: 16 minutes
Q: How many GBs did you extract? A. 1.1 GBs.
Q: What expertise do you have to tell if the files were deleted from the phone? A: If they were in the hands of police or justice operators, they would have had access to deleting them.
Q: From March 14 to April 4, there were 17 files eliminated? A: The chain of custody document began on April 4th and it was given to another person on April 5th. The files were eliminated on April 4th while in the custody of Emerson [missed last name .. a police officer?]
Q: What were the seven activities performed on the phone on April 4th? A: It says that the phone was active but it doesn’t say exactly what was being done. They may have opened a file, changed the volume, opened a photo.
Q: In No. 10 in your conclusions, you found four audio files. What was their status when you located them? A: They were eliminated on April 4th when the phone was in the custody of the authorities and according to the norms, no expert can eliminate evidence or delete files from evidence.
Q: What happens when this occurs? A: It would throw out the evidence, according to what the law says.
The questioning by the prosecution and private accusers will continue tomorrow

At the end of today’s hearing, Castillo’s defense attorneys claim that they are receiving threats. The court responds that they have raised the issue before but that it is out of their power to act and that they need to follow the relevant legal procedures to denounce the threats.