Two kinds of evidence helped a Merrimack County jury convict Darrin Partlow of raping his former wife's daughter: the victim's testimony and her text messages.

The messages' content was irrelevant. Instead, the texts significantly bolstered the girl's timeline of the assaults: Her phone records showed that she had texted constantly - except during those times when she testified she had been raped.

That sort of electronic evidence - text messages, cell phone calls and e-mails - is increasingly becoming key evidence for prosecutors and defense lawyers in criminal and civil cases, legal and law enforcement experts.

"Society is a lot more mobile than it used to be, and we have communication at our fingertips wherever we may be," said Jon Hebert, who retired as a captain with Carroll County Sheriff's Office this summer and now analyzes electronic communications at his company, Jonathan Hebert LLC, in Intervale.

"After identifying two people working together in a (criminal) conspiracy, you'd be remiss as an investigator not to analyze how they coordinate their activities and communications to perpetrate their evil deeds on society," he said.

The Concord police arrested Robert Boyd in June for the armed robbery of Checkmate Pizza after discovering he'd sent a text message claiming responsibility for the holdup, according to court records.

Last year, text messages between a Concord High student and the principal of Bishop Brady High School led the police to charge the student with felony drug possession.

Even the state's two recent capital murder trials, against Michael Addison and John Brooks, depended heavily on cell phone records.

The Manchester police tied Addison to the murder of Officer Michael Briggs, in part, with a cell phone call he made eight minutes after the shooting.

Brooks and his co-defendants tried to avoid detection by setting up the murder of Jack Reid on a TracFone, a prepaid cell phone that can be bought anonymously with cash. They might have been successful had Brooks not called the phone from his house, giving the police an obvious connection between him and Reid.

Last month, Concord police Detective Todd Flanagan used text messages between the players of a stabbing on Cheryl Drive to dispute the claims of one key witness.

That witness minimized her communication with the victim until their text messages told Flanagan otherwise, according to court records. Confronted with the text messages, the woman admitted she had lured the victim to Concord with an offer to exchange sex for drugs, court records said.

"It's not absolute, because you still have to determine who has the phone at the time the text messages were sent," Flanagan said. "But it's coming up more often than not because, it's how people communicate."

He appreciates greatly the evidence cell phones provide him. But he is not without complaint. People have become so accustomed to communicating in the shorthand of text messaging, their witness statements often look like texts.

"It has hurt," he said. "People can't write a statement to save their lives."

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