According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a 60-year-old Sydney area man was saved from charges of rape of an 18-year-old woman acquaintance when forensic phone expert Gary Coulthart retrieved 300 deleted texts and phone calls from the alleged victim.
The messages appeared to undermine the allegations, all charges were dropped and the prosecutor was to pay $30,056 of the charged man's legal costs.
"Without the ability of Coulthart to drag the content out, a man's life may have been ruined. iPhone evidence is a bit like DNA," said defending attorney John Gooley. According to Coulthart, an iPhone has up to 32 GB of data that can be decoded with the right equipment, even if it has been deleted.