Denby trial enters week three with cybersecurity officer on stand

The trial against a Cameron resident has entered its third week. Bill Denby is facing charges of uttering death threats, criminal harassment and intimidating a justice participant.

Denby has pleaded not guilty and is representing himself. The case is being heard by a 12‑member jury, with Justice Lisa Wannamaker presiding and Crown attorney Natasha Jerome leading the prosecution. Denby is acting as his own counsel and has entered not‑guilty pleas to all charges.

Throughout the trial, several councillors have been called to the stand to discuss an email sent on April 9, 2024 which Denby denies sending.

The email was originally sent to the city clerk and CAO Ron Taylor, and was forwarded to council members. Allegedly, the email contained violent threats. Councillors have testified that the threats caused fear in their everyday lives, forcing them to take security measures, including installing home security cameras.

Today, Denby called Caroline Nobuto to the stand. Nobuto gave expert opinion testimony on the best practices on the chain of custody of electronic evidence, specifically emails. The objective of these practices, she said, is to ensure that emails have not been doctored or modified.

Nobuto, a cybersecurity officer, looks at eml files, which are essentially the programming and coding behind an email, to see if it’s been doctored. By looking at the emls for both the sender and receiver’s email, she can confirm if they are the same, or if one of them has been modified.

With Gmail and Hotmail specifically, “it’s impossible to identify the IP address… (an email) was sent from,” Nobuto told the jury.

Requests for access to an eml are normally made quickly, as after 30 days a lot of the detailed information is gone. Nobuto said that without having seen the eml for the April 9 email, she can’t say one way or the other if the email was fabricated.

“You cannot confirm who wrote it,” Nobuto said. To her knowledge no technology exists that could confirm with certainty who the author of an email is.

The trial is set to hear closing arguments tomorrow, with the jury anticipated to begin deliberations on Wednesday morning.