THE LANTERMAN REPORT

Mark Lanterman was the State's cyber expert. He volunteered his services for the case and received no pay. Interestingly, one potential juror was rejected by the prosecution for likely having heard Lanterman speak at a seminar. The potential juror, a litigation attorney who said that it was important to listen to both sides and who respected the jury system, said that her impression of Lanterman was that when he addressed the State Bar Association, he was selling his consulting services.

Since the trial, Lanterman has certainly had the opportunity to promote his consulting services. He has appeared in many media productions about the Allwine case, including doing an interview with Fox News. 

In the March 2018 issue of Bench & Bar of Minnesota, Washington County attorney, Pete Orput said of Lanterman's testimony at the Allwine trial, "... without this work the case would have been a horse race." With Stephen's defense lawyer admitting the technical side of the case was over his head, Lanterman was able to present an uncontested digital trail and timeline that was never verified by any other cyber expert due to the fact that Lanterman remains the sole custodian of the devices taken from Allwine home. 

Despite his expertise, his report contained misinformation. For example, in his paragraph about the Dark Web, Lanterman wrote, "Approximately 17% of the Internet is indexed by search engines. The remaining portion is comprised of the Dark Web. Webpages on the Dark Web have both legal and illegal purposes..."

In fact, "the terms 'deep web' and 'dark web' are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Deep web refers to anything on the internet that is not indexed by and, therefore, accessible via a search engine like Google. Deep web content includes anything behind a paywall or requires sign-in credentials."

While the dark web contains hitman sites, the deep web contains our banking, our Amazon accounts and anything else that requires us to have a password. This simple error on page 3 of Lanterman's report should have set off some warning bells that the State's expert was either dumbing down his information at the expense of truth, or that despite his seeming expertise he didn't really understand the Dark Web. 

About Lanterman, defense's attorney Kevin DeVore said the following 

... amazingly, Mark Lanterman is going to do this for free. He heard about the case, and he reached out to the state, and he said, I want to make sure this is done right. The same criteria that the judge gave you to evaluate the credibility of a witness can be used not only for the defendant's witnesses, but also for the state's. 

Remember the criteria that the judge gave you. What motivation does a person have when they testify in this court? You get to determine the weight of the credibility of every witness, including Mark Lanterman. 

Now, Mark Lanterman claims he cracked the code. It's a code that the FBI couldn't crack. He did it in a few weeks. They took months and they couldn't find anything. Neither the FBI, nor the Cottage Grove Police could have done what apparently he claims to have done in a few weeks. Why is that? How is that? Does he have more money than the FBI? Does he have more resources than the FBI? Questions that you can consider when you determine the credibility of his testimony.

The Note on the iPhone ~ exhibit O

The State's smoking gun was a Note on Stephen's iPhone that he supposedly made in March and deleted seconds afterwards. It was found in the Cloud in August. However, deleted Notes are only stored for 30 days afterwards, according to Apple's technical documentation. 

A HIERARCHY OF EXPERT PERFORMANCE APPLIED TO DIGITAL FORENSICS ~ exhibit N

 

TIMELINE THAT MATCHES THE EVIDENCE ~ exhibit M

 

ALTERNATIVE PERPETRATOR ~ exhibit L

When the defendant seems like the only person who has a motive, the jury will usually convict him or her on the basis of there being no one else who would have likely done it. A defense attorney needs to be able to demonstrate that there is solid evidence that the crime was committed by another person, something which is known as the alternative perpetrator strategy.

In the case of Amy Allwine, her life had been threatened six months before her death and all the evidence at the time pointed to it being a fellow dog-trainer, not her husband, who had gone online to a dark web hitman site.

THE DIGITAL TRAIL ~ exhibit I & exhibit J & exhibit K

The digital trail that was so damaging to Stephen's case was largely unchallenged by his defense attorney who admitted to not fully grasping the technical details. Questions that could have been asked and challenges that could have been raised never happened at the trial. 

WAS DIVORCE A MOTIVE? ~ exhibit F & exhibit G & exhibit H

Although divorce was presented as a motive for the murder, the prosecutor provided no proof that Stephen ever considered a divorce or had taken any steps to precipitate one. The jurors and public were informed that divorce would have destroyed his standing in his church. However, as part of his petition of post conviction relief, Stephen provided two divorce petitions. 

The first belonged to the president of the United Church of God that Stephen attended and served in. The second belonged to a fellow alumni of Ambassador College, the church's de facto seminary, who, like Stephen, served as a church elder.

Neither men had been penalized by United Church of God for being divorced. 

Exhibit F & exhibit G consisted of the divorce petitions, which contained sensitive information to the parties involved.