Killing Time; the Importance of Time Synchronisation in Criminal Cases.
Posted on May 16, 2008
Filed Under Law |
This article explores how time synchronisation devices have captured criminals.
On occasion, we all need to know the time and we have a
multitude of different devices to tell us it, from our mobile phones and wrist
watches to the office wall clock or the chimes on the radio news. But how
accurate are all these clocks and does it matter if they are all telling
different times?
For our day-to-day business it probably doesn’t matter too
much. If the office wall clock is a faster than your wrist-watch
probably won’t fire you for being a minute late but when it comes to solving
criminal cases, timing is everything!
Take the
case of Joan Beddeson, a 71-year-old found murdered in her home in
Macclesfield. The chief suspect, her former lover who owed the victim over a
quarter of a million pounds, 64-year-old John Crittenden, denied the killing,
claiming he was at home in bed with his wife at the time of the murder.
However,
police had discovered a credit card statement that showed that Crittenden had
bought fuel in Worcester just hours before the killing and was then spotted on
a camera 12 minutes later travelling up the motorway towards Macclesfield.
Later that night the same car was recorded coming back down the motorway
leaving Crittenden with a 45 minute window to commit his crime.
However,
during his trial Crittenden, who admitted buying the fuel, denied travelling up
the motorway and claimed the cameras were not accurate. However, the cameras
were all synchronised using a NTP time server (Network Time Protocol) to Universal
Coordinated Time (UTC) and was so accurate that Crittenden’s lawyers had no
defence and he was convicted of the murder and sent to prison for life.
Time
synchronisation is not just important in securing convictions it can also prove
somebody’s innocence! When a woman was found murdered in Maryland US, the
police thought they had found the perpetrators when the victim’s bank card was
being used at an ATM. A check at a local CCTV camera provided footage of three
suspects using the machine and although the quality was quite grainy, once
aired on America’s Most Wanted, the three suspects were soon rounded up.
However, it
emerged that the time recorded by the camera was three minutes off the time
recorded by the ATM and the three people held were an entirely innocent family,
not connected with he murder at all!
The
investigators conceded that if the camera had been synchronised to a reliable
source like the ATM machine, then the wrongful arrest would not have been made.
The cases
above underline the importance of reliable time synchronisation. Even if a
business is not involved in the detection of crime, failing to synchronise a
computer network can leave a system vulnerable to fraud, data loss and even
legal exposure and without it, organizations can lose credibility.
Specialist , allowing networks to be accurately synchronized
to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) the International time scale.
About the author
Richard N Williams is a technical author and a
specialist in the telecommunications and network time synchronisation industry
helping to develop dedicated time server products. Please visit us for
more information about a GPS time server or other NTP
products.
Tags: chimes, convictions, different times, former lover, innocence, john crittenden, life time, motorway, multitude, network time protocol, ntp time server, perpetrators, radio news, server network, synchronised, time synchronisation, time utc, universal coordinated time, wall clock, wrist watches
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