A DEAD BATTERY?

August 2005 my trial attorney asked me to provide a list of what needed to be subpoenaed.  Within two days I faxed him a list...which was over two pages long.  The list included (but was not limited to) the contributor's 2001, 2002 and 2003 Separate Property bank statements, financial statements, support for all transactions, individual income tax returns and the computer.   He subpoenaed part of the things on the list that Fall, the computer was included in his subpoenas.  We were told everything would come to us before Thanksgiving 2005.  It did not.  Then I was told to show up a couple times to review the documents prior to Christmas, again they did not show up. 

Finally I was called in the second week of February 2006 to review what they did bring in, which was less than what was subpoenaed and did not include the computer.  My attorney called their civil attorneys asking about the computer.  He was given the run around and for a few weeks nobody knew where the computer was.  It had disappeared!  Then they miraculously found it, kept promising to bring it in, but did not.  This behavior continued until the Discovery hearing on May 26, 2006, when they started their arguments of relevance and privilege.  Privilege is unheard of in criminal cases but guess what?  They continued to argue through out the summer.  I started requesting forensics when I received a list of files and realized much of what I needed was gone plus there were several other peculiarities in the list of files.  In the May hearing I started asking for FBI involvement.  The Judge kept saying her budget wouldn't allow for forensics.  Okay, so I am innocent, want to prove it, but its not within the Judge's budget?  It appears that the DA's office did not take the computer into evidence because then my defense would have a right to all its contents.  Don't ever let anybody tell you prosecution is about truth, it is about winning...plain and simple. 

With regard to forensics I decided the only chance I would have is to get the media involved so I sent an email entitled "Forensics PLEASE", dated August 25, 2006 to my attorney (Birdsall), the prosecutor (Moss, ADA), Judge Faith Johnson, and two investigative reporters, Becky Oliver and Byron Harris, with a followup on August 28, 2006.  The name of the followup email was "Deleted Files".  I have both emails imaged below (you may have to increase your "zoom" level to 125% to read the documents):

As a result of these two emails my attorney told me the Judge was angry and was talking about pulling my PR (personal recognizance) Bond so I would have to sit in jail until my trial.  She said she had never seen anything like it in her 16 years as Judge.  I did these emails because there seemed no other way to get what I needed to prove my innocence and I was not in violation of the terms of my PR Bond.  Although, she could have remanded me for Contempt of Court, but that would have brought attention to my case and that is what nobody seemed to want.

On September 25, 2006 the Judge begrudgingly approved the computer forensics, complaining about what it would do to her budget.  Upon her decision at the Hearing the contributor (my false accuser) stormed out of the Courtroom.

October 8, 2006 I provided a detailed letter of everything I needed the forensics expert to look at based on a revised and complete listing of all files on the hard drive which he had provided.  The computer files were fragmented (files in pieces intermingled with code), they said as a result of a dead battery.  But prior to them allowing the battery to die there was evidence that someone had laid thousands of files on top of mine, crowding my files and causing a complete deletion for many files from the system.  I wanted to see all files then I could determine what they had used to tamper with the evidence.  I was told by the Judge that I would meet with her and  review ("in camera" - meaning outside the Courtroom) all the files so I could explain how the various files related to my defense.  When she lost the election, she postponed my trial due to on-going forensics, and she said, in Court, there was some advantages to losing the election because she sure didn't want to review thousands of files from my computer.

The forensics expert was able to "defragment" many of the files but the date stamps were destroyed.  There were approximately twenty banker's boxes full of recovered files.  I was allowed about one inch of those files, most of which were totally useless.  Even the files that did have information that may have been helpful and raised questions were not used by my trial attorney.  When the new Judge took the bench I was not allowed to view anything "in camera".  The times I mentioned this to my attorney he would just shake his head....he would not bring it up in our Hearings.

To this day I believe there are things in that computer that could have helped my defense even with so much deleted, plus I feel certain I could have figured out how they tampered with those files.  I believe there is a pattern both to what was overlaid and to the date stamps...I am not believing there was a random malfunction causing ALL the problems.  The Court allowed itself to be led by the contributor's civil attorneys.  As a consequence, it was the men who falsely accused me who determined what computer files I was allowed to see and use in my defense.  They expended so much energy and legal fees keeping the computer's contents away from me that I am certain there are things they know I would recognize and be able to use in my defense and definitely information toward the impeachment of their characters.