On Friday, August 14, 2009, California Judge William Froeburg confirmed the death penalty handed down by a jury a few weeks earlier for Jason Aguirre, a member of a known violent street gang in Orange County, California (located just south of Los Angeles). In August 2003, six years earlier almost to the day, Mr. Aguirre had gunned down a young teen boy and critically wounded two other family members in a case of mistaken identity. For this, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of committing the murder for the benefit of his gang.

What was it that convinced these twelve Californians from various walks of life to hand down the ultimate sentence? Was Mr. Aguirre's DNA recovered from the crime scene? No, his DNA was found on a bandana in a car that was used in the crime, but one he had been in many times, not just that night.

Were his fingerprints on the gun? Did the ballistics match up? No, the gun was never recovered. Though there were other perpetrators fingering him as the shooter, the motives behind their testimony could be easily challenged without something to give it some standing.

So what put Mr. Aguirre on California's death row? Big surprise here... Digital Evidence.

Yes, it’s true, gang members use the same powerful social mediums to communicate with one another just as we do.

Like many of you, I have seized and analyzed my fair share of digital devices. But by far, the ones that have proven themselves, time and again, to be a treasure trove of evidence and criminal intelligence has been those used by gang members. In their online chat sessions, gang members discuss activities that include the planning and execution of crimes, drug cultivation and distribution, and the buying and selling of weapons, to name just a few of the things I have seen. The social networking Web sites they visit glorify gang culture or promote their individual street gangs. These same gang members, who won't say a word to you when questioned, will have folder after folder full of digital photos documenting their gang life, everything from gang posturing to drug use and other crimes. Throughout all of their use of digital devices, they nearly always use their known gang monikers as their online identifiers.