Douglas Plude, convicted of his wife’s murder, says computer logs provide an alibi. Plude, who lived in Wisconsin, claims his expert had insufficient time before trial to review them.

What makes this case relevant is that the family had two computers. On the night of October 21, shortly before Plude’s wife Genell died, both computers were active around 10 p.m. Genell’s computer shows the user conducted online searches for information on Fioricet–a codeine derivative. Plude’s computer shows Internet activity and use of a photo editing program between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Plude claims that parallel activity indicates that Genell was looking up information about Fioricet, buttressing the conclusion of suicide.

The trial judge ruled that waiting three years to turn over key evidence of the hard drives was reasonable. A jury convicted Plude of first-degree homicide, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. A Wisconsin appeals court has denied his request by a 2-1 vote and affirmed his conviction.

Even if the computer searches had been thoroughly explored, the majority concluded, they wouldn’t be entirely exculpatory: “Whoever performed the search on Genell’s computer only examined the first page of various results–no page with dosing information was ever displayed on the computer.”