DENVER — An all-day hearing was held in a Denver courtroom on Friday that could go a long way in determining the outcome of a high-profile murder case.
It was August 5, 2020. That's when an early morning fire destroyed a house on Truckee Street in Green Valley Ranch. When it was over, five people inside the house were killed, including a two-year-old girl and a six-month-old girl. Police quickly determined that the blaze was intentionally set but the case was completely cold for several months. Until, they say, Google led them to three teenagers: 16-year-old Kevin Bui, 16-year-old Gavin Seymour and a 15-year-old charged as a juvenile. Bui and Seymour are now 18 years old.
Police said, based on the results of a search warrant they served on Google, they learned that the three teenaged suspects searched the exact address of the Truckee Street house multiple times in the two weeks before the fire.
According to prosecutors, a computer app that the teens used to locate Bui's stolen cellphone mistakenly led them to search for and then burn the wrong house down. In court on Friday, Seymour's attorney argued that the Google search warrant was far too broad and violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and should not be allowed as evidence at trial. CU criminal law professor Aya Gruber said Friday's hearing raised a number of important and complicated issues.
"There is a world in which the court could find that this was an illegal search but (police could) still pursue the suspects with the evidence found in their home and other evidence found in the investigation," Gruber said.
The judge's decision on the motion to suppress the Google search results is expected at the end of October.
The trial could begin sometime in January.
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