Bohm returns to court as unlocked phone yields evidence
The Malibu man accused of killing four Pepperdine students on PCH has another pretrial hearing today, with cellphone data potentially in play.
The Malibu man accused of murdering four Pepperdine University students in 2023 has another pretrial appearance scheduled for today.
Fraser Michael Bohm is accused of four counts of second-degree murder for driving his car above 100 miles an hour and plowing into a group of sorority sisters standing next to parked cars.
Today we might get a glimpse into what was inside Bohm's phone. The judge has ordered Bohm to unlock it in a secure computer facility, with the trial attorneys observing.
The cellphone may hold additional data about how fast Bohm was driving that night. That is a key piece of evidence that might sway a jury into voting for the more serious charges of murder, as opposed to the lesser charges of four counts of vehicular manslaughter.
His car's computer said 104 miles per hour, where the speed limit is 45.
Sheriff's deputies seized the phone after the crash. Bohm will not allow it to be unlocked. The defense lawyers have won a court order to have their experts download the phone data without destroying it.
The judge has ordered prosecutors to transport the phone in a signal-blocking pouch to a facility where an expert for the defense will extract the data, as prosecutors watch.
Bohm wants to prevent investigators from getting an accurate look at just how fast he was driving that awful night in 2023.
His defense lawyers are also planning to argue that PCH is not deadly, and that murder charges are too severe because Bohm could not reasonably have known that PCH is deadly. They argue that the fatality rate on the highway is so low that Bohm could not possibly have known that driving 104 miles per hour on PCH was so dangerous that it could kill people.
The judge may rule today on attempts by Bohm's lawyers to keep the defendant out of prison by arguing that PCH at Deadman's Curve is not really that deadly. They make the argument that PCH actually has a low number of deaths in that stretch.
They say, and we quote: "Statistically, the data shows the opposite, given that drivers frequently speed in that area and no other fatal accidents have occurred."
They hope to use that argument to undermine the prosecution's claim that Bohm's speeding was inherently dangerous to human life. That is an element to win conviction on the more serious charges.
A trial date may be set for some date in summer.