Defense queries how rape photos collected

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STEUBENVILLE, Ohio, March 14 (UPI) -- Defense attorneys questioned Thursday how evidence was gathered from cellphones of people at parties where two Ohio teens allegedly raped a 16-year-old girl.

Testimony in the second day of the trial of two 16- and 17-year-old Steubenville high school football players focused on how information from the defendants' cellphones was collected and authenticated, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported.

A computer forensic analyst said she collected thousands of text messages, videos and photos from 17 cellphones collected by investigators.

Police later sifted through all of that data.

Earlier, Steubenville police Capt. Joel Walker said he found "a couple of photos of a nude girl" among the thousands of pages of records retrieved from the phone of the 17-year-old defendant.

He said one of the images showed a girl naked on a couch and another of a girl nude on the floor with her arms underneath her.

Defense lawyer Walter Madison questioned police methods in collecting the records. He also asked Walker if he had stopped looking for more records after he found the nude photos.

In opening statements Wednesday, Associate Ohio Attorney General Marianne Hemmeter said the humiliation of the sexual acts was amplified by the distribution of nude or semi-nude photos through social media.

If the teens are convicted, they could be sent to a juvenile facility until they turn 21 and made to register as sex offenders.