State Supreme Court Considers Cell Tower Evidence

The Connecticut Supreme Court will step into the national fray over whether or not cellphone tower evidence may be used in criminal trials. A man serving a 20-year sentence for robbery has appealed his conviction, saying prosecutors should not have been allowed to admit evidence that his cell phone “pinged,” or connected with, a cell tower near the crime scene around the same time as the robbery. There are conflicting rulings across the country on the validity of such evidence. “It’s junk science,” Michael Cherry, CEO of Cherry Biometirics, told AP. “People tend to confuse the location of the cellphone tower with the location of the cell tower. People like to say that the phone goes to the nearest tower. It goes to the clearest (signal) tower within range, not always the closest tower. You could be sitting on your living room couch and you could make four phone calls and each call would use a different tower.”