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Minneapolis (AP) ― When prosecutors charged former Gopher football player Dominic Jones with rape last week, they had a 400-page police file and more than 40 interviews at their fingertips.

But the most crucial piece of evidence: a video clip that had been deleted from another football player's cell phone, but was retrieved by investigators.

Cell phones hold a tremendous amount of information and are now part of almost every large investigation. What they reveal can baffle investigators, said Dale Hanson, who became the Minneapolis Police Department's first full-time computer forensic specialist in 2005.

He said a convicted felon on probation has used a cell phone to take a picture of himself holding a gun. Robbers have filmed their crimes. Last month, Jermaine Mack-Lynch was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the killing of a pizza delivery man in Minneapolis. Key to his conviction was cell phone video showing Mack-Lynch dancing with a .357-caliber Magnum.

"We have people telling us they are done being gang members and don't want their name in our database," said Ron Ryan, commander of the Metro Gang Strike Force. "Then we come up with cell phones showing them throwing up gang signs and holding a gun in their hand."

Hanson, 34, has examined more than 150 cell phones in the past two years.

When he received one connected to the Gopher rape allegation, he had no idea what he might find. He rarely comes across deleted video files, especially "one critical to a case as this one," he said.

In April, Gophers football player Alex Daniels videotaped Dominic Jones having sex with an 18-year-old woman who had passed out after drinking vodka, authorities said. Michael Colich, Daniels' attorney, said he hasn't seen the video and could not comment on it.

Daniels and football teammates E.J. Jones and Keith Massey were all arrested shortly after the woman reported the rape, but none has been charged with a crime. Dominic Jones, no relation to E.J., was charged last Monday with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. All four have been kicked off the football team.

The video took the investigation in an unexpected direction, said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

Even though users can't see a deleted text message, cell phone picture or video, those items can remain stored on the phone's flash card, on the phone provider's network, or on the customer's personal computer if the phone or other device is set up to route messages there, said Paul Luehr, a former federal prosecutor and now managing director and deputy general counsel for Stroz Friedberg, a national forensics and technical consulting company.

Computers store deleted information on their hard drives.

"To the average person, (deleting information is) like the kid who throws something in the wastebasket but doesn't empty the wastebasket," he said.

To retrieve deleted data, a cell phone is connected to a blank hard drive and computer with specialized software that captures all data stored on the phone, he said. That information can be saved onto a hard drive, disk or CD. Investigators then search the data, which includes video and pictures, call contacts, history and text messages.

The process isn't foolproof. Deleted information in cell phones can disappear after a few days or weeks, said Luehr. Because cell phones have less storage than computers and are more heavily used, old files can be deleted spontaneously to make room for new data. Luehr said he has seen numerous photos retrieved from cell phones that were half-erased because new data was entered.

Defense attorney Joe Friedberg knows how cell phone technology can affect criminal cases.

Last summer he defended St. Cloud bouncer Paul Buboltz, who was charged with killing Justin Smiley outside a popular nightclub.

An eyewitness snapped a cell phone photo of Buboltz with his arm around Smiley's head. Friedberg said the photo was of "tremendous value" in his client's acquittal because it showed Bulbotz's arm was not on Smiley's windpipe, disproving the prosecution's assertion that Bulbotz cut off Smiley's air supply.

"The knowledge that you can go and pull stuff back from never-never land is of great importance to law enforcement," Friedberg said.

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)