(Image  credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/anonymouscollective/4263193267/)

The act of terrorism on April 15, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts injured 260 American’s and killed three after two bombs were discharged at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Four days after the event two brothers were charged for the attack, a 19 year old man named Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and a 26 year old man named Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after being shot by law enforcement during the attempt to incarcerate him.

The two former Soviet Union citizens had been in the United States for over ten years and had planned the attack without the support or connection to any terrorist organization.  When Tamerlan Tsarnaev was reprimanded after a shootout with Boston law enforcement, he was hiding on a boat and had a note that his actions were meant to be a retaliation for the American wars against the Muslim faith. The family was admitted into the United States as refugees from the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and had become naturalized as landed immigrants in 2012.

On May 15th Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted and received the death penalty for his participation in the Boston Marathon bombing.   The defense has portrayed the younger brother as led by his older and deceased brother Tamerlan.  Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited Dagestan, a militant region of Russia that is known for radical Islam extremists a year before the Boston bombing.

Computer Evidence and the Boston Marathon Bombing
The investigators had pursued other members of the Tsarnaev family with regards to their involvement or prior knowledge of the plan.  The wife of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Katherine Tsarnaev owned a MacBook Pro laptop and it was confiscated during the course of the investigation revealing searches that have led investigators to reason that she may have had prior knowledge of the attack.

Searches on the Katherine Tsarnaev laptop included browser searches for the following phrases, inquiring on the rewards for the wife of a Muslim martyr.

• "if your husband becomes a shahid what are the rewards for you?"
• "wife of mujahideen" "rewards for wife of mujahideen"

The laptop belonging to Katherine Tsarnaev also contained videos of terrorist organizations in Syria, pictures of terrorist acts and leaders and a quote about fighting for Allah which was on a digital sticky-note on the computer that read: “fighting may be imposed on you even if you don’t like it.”  Phone records also revealed that Katherine sent a text to a friend a day after the bombing that read “Although a lot more people are killed every day in Syria + other places.  Innocent people.”

The Taxi Driver Faces Charges under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Khairullozhon Matanov was a friend of the Tsarnaev family and former taxi cab driver in Boston who was subpoenaed to court in June of 2015 for his involvement in the Boston Marathon bombing. Investigators do not have evidence regarding any alleged involvement of Matanov in the terrorism act, but Khairullozhon Matanov could face up to twenty years in prison for obstruction of justice under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for wiping his search browser history on his computer.

The Grand Jury indictment in 2014 revealed that Matanov “deleted a large amount of information from his Google Chrome Internet cache" following the bombing, including "references to the video of the suspected bombers [later identified as the Tsarnaev brothers]...two of the photographs of the bombers released at approximately the same time...[and] a photograph of Officer Sean Collier, who had been allegedly killed by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.”

Outlined in a section of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are penalties for the destruction, mutilation, concealment or falsification of documents or records.

Khairullozhon Matanov, a former taxi driver and acquaintance of the Boston Marathon bombers, is due in court next week. But it's not because he knew about the bombings beforehand, or because he participated in the attacks.

Instead, his crime was deleting his browser history in the days following the bombings. He's been charged with obstruction of justice for the deed, and could spend the next 20 years in prison. Khairullozhon Matanov also faces three additional charges as he allegedly denied knowing the bombers even though they were socially acquainted.  Matanov has plead guilty to all charges and entered a plea for a shortened sentence of thirty-months.

Concerns with the Sarbanes-Oxely Act
Legal experts are debating the merit of applying the Sarbanes-Oxely Act to apply obstruction of justice charges where personal computer devices and technology have been “wiped” for evidence.  Discussions have evaluated the fairness of the interpretation of the act to civilian technical devices, particularly as clearing an internet browser cache is considered to be a normal maintenance activity.

The Sarbanes-Oxely Act was written to penalize individuals who knowingly destroy evidence with the intent to impede investigation of a criminal activity.  According to some legal experts, the case against Khairullozhon Matanov will require evidence that he knowingly cleared his cache in anticipation of an investigation while others claim that the SOX Act can be applied broadly.

Criminal defense lawyers in will county are watching the development of the case closely, as the use of the Sarbanes-Oxely Act in this case against a private citizen who is not part of a corporation will be precedent setting. It may impact how long citizens retain cache and browser history as a precaution in event of a criminal investigation.

A History of the Sarbanes-Oxely (SOX) Act
The original law was enacted on July 30, 2002 and signed by President George Bush in light of investigation issues with the 2001 Enron case.  The law is also known as the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” in the Senate, and the “Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act” in the House of Representatives.

The SOX Act (Pub.L. 107–204, 116 Stat. 745) specifically defines instances of obstruction of justice by falsified documents, financial reports and statements and the destruction of evidence including accounting, sales and marketing and personnel records or information.

The Sarbanes-Oxely (SOX) Act additionally outlines provisions for privately held companies and penalties for the willful destruction of evidence with the intention to impede a Federal criminal investigation.   Penalties against business owners, board of directors or corporate governance and departmental employees outlined in the SOX Act include up to twenty years in federal prison for offenders.  While the Act was passed the Securities and Exchange Commission was also required to create standard regulations that outlined best practice and compliance for public corporations.