Quote:
Originally Posted by lawdude
....This case is NOT dependent on statistics. It's dependent on things juries understand perfectly well, such as the presence or absence of cell phones, looking at the crotch, friends being in and out of town, and bulges in the hats. You are acting like what the prosecutor would do here is spend days explaining poker statistics to a jury. But only the dumbest prosecutor would do that here. You don't have to, and it's not the way to win cases like this.
I think you are correct regarding Mike, although once things go in front of a jury, anything can happen.
However, I'm not so confident about justice for his accomplice or accomplices. Unless people start to talk.
You are right about digital forensics, and how difficult it is to hide evidence. But the issue here is how badly the "crime scene" was compromised, at least according to what I've read here. I would compare it to a murder scene where you have the killer's DNA. But because the police failed to lock down the crime scene, you have the DNA of tens if not hundreds of people, as well. Sure, you may have other evidence, but it's more doubt for jurors to consider.
For example:
1 - The control room was almost never locked, and people were known to come in and out all the time. Someone said they began to lock it a couple of months ago, but not for the first year or so of cheating. And not sure if it was locked when not streaming. In other words, anyone could have loaded something on those servers.
2 - There were apparently no cameras around the control room entrance, meaning you could not use that as evidence for when people came and went. I highly doubt there was any record of who was in that room and when.
3 - Apparently passwords were rarely or never changed. So you have to question the overall user integrity there. If I were going to make changes on the server to support cheating, I would definitely try to do it using someone else's ID/password, or a general ID/password that was used by more than one person, e.g. ADMIN, etc.
4 - Allegations of cheating were raised by at least 2 people to management. Nothing seemed to happen. Phones were briefly banned but not really banned. Doors remained unlocked, etc. So at the very least you can show serious incompetence in how security was managed. Which again makes it difficult to isolate on one individual as the co-conspirator.
So to summarize, Mike is likely in serious legal trouble. But if he refuses to confess and name co-conspirators, nobody else talks, and the overall security at Stones was as bad as it's being described here, then.... Not so confident anyone else will go down.
If many people were involved, e.g. multiple commentators - something I highly doubt - then I'm sure people will talk. But if it's just Mike and one other person? Not so sure we'll see justice.