"What are the consequences of deleting text messages, social media posts, social media accounts, or privatizing social media accounts, deleting Snapchats, photos, video off a person's phone, when there's an ongoing investigation that might even lead to a criminal proceeding? I'm sure you've all seen a young black American child, Nolan Wells, was discovered dead on Monday after he disappeared on a boat trip with his friends. Now before I get into the legal stuff, I think we can all agree that no matter what your race, If your child fails to come home from a boat trip with his friends and is later discovered dead, those friends better have a full satisfactory explanation. I think it's also fair to say that if your child is the only black American among a group of otherwise white children, then the situation looks a little bit more sinister and the questions become more urgent. The friends have not proffered a satisfactory explanation. Social media accounts have either been deleted or privatized. What's more disturbing still is the fact that while they did not bring him home, they brought Nolan Wells' phone home. Absent from that phone was the type of photos, videos, Snapchats, etc. that one would come to expect from an 18-year-old boy. The individuals who have last had custody of that phone wasn't Nolan Wells, but the very people who have failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of his disappearance and death. His family has started to raise questions about whether or not some of this evidence may have been deleted. So here are some law things that everyone should know about spoliation of and tampering with evidence. It is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in jail for anyone. And you do not need to work for the government. You do not need to be a lawyer. You do not need to be a police officer for anyone to tamper with evidence that would be used in a criminal proceeding. Specifically under 18 U.S.C. Section 1512C, it is a crime punishable by up to 20 years in jail to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal a record document or other object or an attempt to do so with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. So that's really important to note. You do not need to actually succeed in deleting, concealing or destroying evidence. An attempt to do so can lead to the same punishment. 20 years in jail. A person's social media account, a social media post, even a DM or a comment, all of those things would fall under Section 1512. Not only that, if you are a defendant in, say, a murder trial or a conspiracy for a murder trial, the fact that you destroyed evidence will lead to an inference by the jury of your guilt. The judge can literally instruct the jury that the fact that you destroyed evidence is itself evidence of consciousness of guilt. And finally, to the extent the family decides to file a wrongful death lawsuit against you because you were in some way involved with the death, you can have your defenses struck and a judgment rendered against you. Even if you privatize or delete things off of social media, the social media platforms likely have preserved all of that. It takes a subpoena to get access to all of it. Moreover, lawyers often hire forensic experts who used to have one on speed dial in order to recover whatever it is you're trying to hide. And like I said, all of this is just going to be evidence that you were aware that you did something wrong."