Cell phone as smoking gun: In court, few messages are gone for good

According to legal forensic experts, phones these days have replaced computers as the most important source of digital evidence -- evidence that can nearly impossible to erase for good.

In the legal process known as discovery, people identify and turn over documents the other side thinks will help their case. This has normally meant turning over filing cabinets and bankers boxes, but today discovery is more likely to involve laptops, e-mail servers and mobile phones. Typically, lawyers will ask people to surrender their phones for a few hours to a firm that specializes in storing and scouring digital Smoking Gun and Laptopdocuments. Once the sweep is complete, the phones (and other electronic devices) are returned to the owners, leaving the lawyers to pick through the copied set of phone files in search of a bombshell. Sometimes they find one.