Should an Amazon Echo help solve murder?

It was only a matter of time. In what appears to be a milestone in the Internet of things era, police have asked Amazon for data that may have been recorded on its Echo device while a murder was taking place. As the Information reports (paywall), a man named Victor Collins died sometime during the night of November 21, 2015, while visiting James Andrew Bates, a friend from work, at his home in Bentonville, Arkansas. Collins's body was discovered in a hot tub the next morning, and Bates was charged with first-degree murder. Bates had several smart devices in his home, the Echo among them.