The State Supreme Court last week upheld a rape conviction for a Northumberland County man, and in the process affirmed that the use of an internet search engine is admissible in court in criminal cases.
John Kurtz of Paxinos, PA had sought to overturn his conviction on a claim that his Google search for his victim’s home address was private and should not have been used by authorities to track him down after the 2016 incident. Police determined that there were two Google searches of the address in the hours before the abduction and rape of the woman, whose husband had left for work on the midnight shift at a state prison. Kurtz drove to the remote location where the couple lived, broke in and bound the woman with zip ties, then led her to his camper where he sexually assaulted her. Kurtz was a co-worker of the victim’s husband.
The internet finding led police to Kurtz, and they matched his DNA to samples taken from the victim and to a cigarette butt found in a field.
In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Kurtz had “turned over the contents of his search to Google, a third party and voluntarily relinquished his privacy interest,” citing Google’s privacy policy, “which specifically allowed for the company to turn over search results when requested by law enforcement.”
Comments