iPhone reportedly helped free a wrongfully accused man from prison

There is a new reason to love the iPhone again, just weeks after major disappointment in the device peaked: it gave a wrongly-accused man his life back.

An unidentified 60-something Australian man (dubbed "Robert" in the press) has had the rape charges against him dropped after iPhone text messages were uncovered by investigators. Better yet, the messages that countered his accuser's description of their relationship had been deleted from his phone, but a phone technician was able to dig them up from the iPhone archives anyway.

Robert lost his job at a Catholic Church (which also showed what forgiveness and redemption are all about by banning him for life from worshiping there), all of his savings, the esteem of his family and friends and so forth. Prosecutors, not the accuser, were ordered to pay the $30,056 in Robert's legal expenses.

This might be the first known example of a deleted text freeing a man from prison, although there have been other instances of subway MetroCards and cell phone call records proving innocence in major criminal cases.

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