Great comment. Wish it was the top one so I didn't have to read through the others to get here.

Do you have thoughts as to how the courts would debate the deletion that you could present on a similar intellectual plane?

Destroying potential evidence before suspicion is a crime if done with intent to impede a future investigation, even if the investigation hasn't yet started. Your example would be a crime if it could be proven that there would likely have been evidence in what you deleted.