
State Attorney fires IT director who raised concerns in Trayvon Martin case - smsm42
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-07-13/story/state-attorney-angela-corey-fires-information-techonology-director-who
======
s_q_b
Pursuant to Brady and Giglio, a prosecutor has an affirmative obligation to
turn over all testimony and documents that are exculpatory or tend to impeach
the credibility of a prosecution witness.

In layman's terms, a prosecutor has a duty to turn over all evidence of
innocence to the defense, and failing to do so is a violation of the law and
ethical rules.

I should note this includes expert reports, especially when the underlying
evidence is of the "data dump" variety.

Unfortunately, it is extremely common for prosecutors to try to skirt this
rule. Much like police protect one another, employees of some district
attorneys are expected to cover these violations as an almost routine matter.

As prosecutors enjoy almost absolute judicial immunity, the regulations in the
Rules of Professional Conduct are all that provide for sanctions in case of a
violation. This measure has proved rather toothless as many state ethics
boards, often composed of former prosecutors, are reluctant to issue
sanctions.

Even in the most egregious violation of the Brady rule that I have seen, which
occurred during the Duke lacrosse team case when ex-DA Nifong hid an
exculpatory DNA report, the state ethics bar did not issue sanctions for that
violation.

Credentials: I am not a lawyer, but I have worked as a paralegal for several
years and captained a mock trial team for both high school and college. I have
written documents that have been submitted in the courts after approval by
attorneys, some specifically on this point.

~~~
malandrew
Should there not be some mandate that state ethics boards be made up of
approximately 50% prosecutorial and 50% defense attorneys? Ethics boards
should exhibit the same adversarial process as the courts.

~~~
s_q_b
Sure, but it would be difficult to enforce in practice. Many former
prosecutors go on to become defense attorneys, plaintiff's attorneys, etc.
However, they retain many of the biases they picked up while working in the
prosecutor's office. Thus, composing a neutral ethics board would be very
difficult.

They do use a form of adversarial process, with attorneys for both the
complainant and the state presenting their sides of the case. But with a
biased panel, little justice is served.

From my perspective, many attorneys place too much trust in the notion that a
lawyer is a trusted "officer of the court." Because most attorneys believe
themselves to be capable of neutrality, they trust others to do the same. In
reality, everybody carries their bias with them.

The most effective solution is the one we have painstakingly developed over
900 years of common law jurisprudence: neutral juries composed of citizens
chosen by lot.

------
downandout
This was a very clear warning to all other state employees: if we sign your
paychecks, you better help us throw people in prison when we want to - even if
the facts don't support it. If you don't, we will not only fire you, but
attempt to ensure that you never work again. It's a scary glimpse into the
base nature of people attracted to jobs as prosecutors.

Prosecutors do serve a purpose in society. A small percentage of the people
they incarcerate are actually dangerous and need to be restrained. However,
the kinds of people that are attracted to spending their lives destroying the
lives of other humans tend to be vindictive monsters and generally awful
people, not unlike the worst of those they prosecute. I hope he sues for
wrongful termination and is successful.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's a hefty slice of bias you've got right there. In what way do you think
these facts undermined the prosecution case?

~~~
wl
The evidence that the state allegedly failed to turn over in discovery
included text messages describing Treyvon Martin's fighting, discussions about
buying and selling firearms, and a picture of a hand (presumably Martin's)
holding a pistol. Had this withheld information been allowed into evidence, it
would tend to undermine the claims that Martin was a peaceful person,
supporting Zimmerman's assertion that Martin started the fight and ultimately
supporting his claim of self-defense.

There is some debate about whether or not the state in fact turned over this
evidence. As I understand it, the state turned over an image of Treyvon
Martin's cell phone in a format that the defense experts were unable to read.
According to the state, this fulfilled their discovery obligations in this
matter.

~~~
king_jester
> Had this withheld information been allowed into evidence, it would tend to
> undermine the claims that Martin was a peaceful person, supporting
> Zimmerman's assertion that Martin started the fight and ultimately
> supporting his claim of self-defense.

Whether Trayvon Martin was a peaceful person or not is irrelevant, there are
no direct witnesses of the actual fight between him and Zimmerman and Martin
had definite reason to fear for his own safety that night. This evidence seeks
to imply racist stereotypes of black men being hyper-aggressive.

~~~
adventured
Can you explain how the supposed implications of the evidence has anything to
do with Martin being black?

It's my opinion that if a white person had those photos on their phone, it
would count negatively against a claimed peaceful character as well.

Unfortunately whether Martin was peaceful or not is absolutely not irrelevant.
An important part of a trial like this is character construction /
deconstruction by the prosecution and defense.

~~~
_delirium
Let's say that someone was a big fan of Joe Arpaio, and had photos of
themselves on their phone relating to their Minutemen Militia service. And,
separately from that, they were involved in an alleged murder of someone who
happened to be Latino.

Should their photos be allowed into evidence? I.e. should the jury be allowed
to consider: 1) their support for a hardline right-wing sheriff; and/or 2)
their membership in an armed anti-immigrant organization? Or would that bias
the jury?

~~~
anigbrowl
I can't help noticing that you've switched a homicide victim with a murder
defendant. A more appropriate analogy might be of a Joe Arpaio fan allegedly
being murdered by someone who happened to be Latino, who then claimed self-
defense.

I get that you're trying to pose the question of whether the homicide victim
was also an aggressor, but if so we need to include the context that the
person in question was fleeing the defendant when the alleged aggression took
place.

If I chase you down the street for no good reason, and you turn around and
punch me in the nose, who's at fault?

~~~
smsm42
If you just chase, not brandishing a weapon, screaming threats or in some
other way giving a person being chased reasonable fear for his life, then the
person punching is at fault. Running on the street is not a violation of
anybody's rights, and you do not have to have any specific "good reason" to
run on the street, neither is running while other person is present on the
same street. Punching one in the nose, on the other hand, is.

------
fnordfnordfnord
>violated public records law for retaining documents,

I doubt that. Most public records laws I have ever seen explicitly state that
if you are a State employee and you have documents which you know to be
germane to an ongoing criminal investigation that they must not be destroyed,
and that knowingly destroying documents in such a case is an offense.

~~~
tantalor
I think you misunderstood. The implication was he "violated public records law
for retaining documents" _by destroying documents_.

The relevant paragraph is,

 _Peek 's letter contends that on May 24, Kruidbos wiped clean the information
on a computer assigned to him, thereby violating public records law._

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Right you are, I missed that part.

------
_delirium
Interesting to see this on the HN front page. Is it because of genuine
technological interest in the IT aspect of this case? Or because of the
prevalence of Ron-Paul-style racist "libertarians" among the HN membership?

~~~
smsm42
This is because many IT workers deal with data, some of which present moral
choices as they may document various wrongdoing. This poses certain questions
before IT workers as to what they are to do in such situations and what the
consequences may be. One recent case about it is the Snowden case, widely
discussed here, another is this one.

I can't even think what this may have to do with racism other than you trying
to play race card at a completely inappropriate occasion or just using
"racist" as a general swear word.

~~~
_delirium
_I can 't even think what this may have to do with racism_

Then you aren't thinking very hard.

~~~
smsm42
Enlighten me then. If you've got something beyond crying racism - some
argument behind it - it's time to put it on the table. Not holding my breath
though.

------
brk
A perhaps bad analogy: what if this were DNA evidence? Does the defense and
prosecution both need to do their own analysis of a sample? Or does the data
found by the prosecution automatically get shared to the defense?

~~~
tantalor
If the analysis is going to be submitted as evidence or testimony, then yes I
believe they must share the results.

~~~
arh68
What if it's not going to be used as evidence by you, but maybe perhaps the
defense? How would you know what could necessarily interest the defense? It
seems a prosecutor could argue that they had no idea these images they saw
would ever be considered evidence. Why bring them up? This just smells
retaliatory, though.

~~~
tantalor
They have to share that too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exculpatory_evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exculpatory_evidence)

------
greenyoda
"In March, the office investigated a security breach involving someone hacking
computers to obtain disciplinary matters and personal health information about
employees, according to Peek’s letter. _That investigation followed news
reports in February that Corey [the State Attorney] approved using about
$342,000 in taxpayer dollars to upgrade pensions for herself and de la Rionda
[the lead prosecutor]._ "

I find it disturbing that government employees in Florida can approve raising
their _own_ pensions.

------
Zikes
Do the right thing, wait to get fired? [1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6029823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6029823)

------
hristov
He did not act properly. He should have informed the prosecutor of his
concerns before starting to leak. Of course this may be more the fault of his
lawyer that acted really inappropriately. It seems the lawyer had an axe to
grind against the Attorney General so she might have decided to kind of
sacrifice her client in order to embarrass her enemy.

Regarding the data, it is possible that the prosecutor decided the data is not
relevant for the case and that there is no need to embarrass the victim who
cannot defend himself.

There is no dispute that the victim was not armed at the time of the attack.
Having died as the result of the attack he did not really have an opportunity
to hide his gun afterwards. It being established that he was unarmed at the
time of the attack, his relationship with guns before the attack is not really
relevant. The fact that he had a picture of a gun on his cell is really
irrelevant.

~~~
s_q_b
"Regarding the data, it is possible that the prosecutor decided the data is
not relevant for the case and that there is no need to embarrass the victim
who cannot defend himself."

That's a dangerous justification.

First, the prosecutor is not the arbiter of relevance. The evidence should be
turned over, and then the judge can make a determination as to its relevance.
Allowing prosecutors to decide the relevance of evidence in their care would
open the door to myriad abuses.

For example, in a DNA case, what would stop a prosecutor from saying a third
or fourth sample found that matched other individuals wasn't "relevant" to the
case?

Second, the notion that the "victim... cannot defend himself" is not only
factually incorrect but immaterial. The deceased, who has not yet been proven
to be a victim of anything, has the power of the state, armed with billions of
dollars, a prison system, and a small army of investigators to defend him. The
defendant has only his counsel and his wits.

More importantly, damage to that person's reputation is not relevant to the
prosecution of another individual. Our justice system is supposed to place a
premium on the rights of the defendant, since the harm of incarcerating an
innocent person is considered so grave. If the deceased's memory is tarnished
by messages regarding previous violent actions, or purchases of deadly
weapons, that is a price that must be borne to ensure the accused's right to a
fair trial.

Finally, the bar to relevance is extremely low. The rules of evidence state
that relevant evidence it is any item which makes a fact in dispute more or
less likely to be true. Note that it does not set any minimum bar on how much
the evidence would influence the case, only that it affect an issue in
dispute, even in the most minute fashion.

In this case, it is the defense's contention that the deceased acted violently
and in fact provoked the confrontation, and that the accused acted only in
self defense. It is also their contention that the deceased reached for a
firearm.

It is certainly relevant that the deceased's conversion indicate that he had
knowledge of firearms, that he purchased deadly weapons in the past, and that
had an admitted history of violence.

------
droopyEyelids
So if I read that correctly, the same image file was available to both the
defense and the prosecution.

When Kruidbos' discovery process found information that the defense hadn't
found, he was concerned that he should turn it over to them.

Then he sought out a lawyer to parlay with the lawyers involved in the case,
avoiding his office's chain of command.

Well, I think we'd need a lawyer to say what should have happened here-- Does
anyone know whether the state is responsible for turning over everything they
pull out of an image? Or is it enough to provide the image to the defense?

~~~
nugget
I watched the entire testimony on YouTube and from what I can tell, it boils
down to this:

\- both sides had an extremely hard to parse, near unintelligible raw source
file (data dump from the phone)

\- the prosecutor's office had purchased a software package that could turn
this raw source file into a much more easily readable report

\- the prosecutor's office didn't think that the defense would pay the several
thousands of dollars for the same software, in order to generate the same
report

\- the prosecutor's office provided only the raw source file and declined to
provide any of the auto-generated reports which were meant to extract data
from, organize and allow for easier analysis of that source file

\- the IT guy knew this and was afraid that in the future, someone could claim
he acted in negligence

\- unbeknownst to the IT guy, the defense had indeed purchased other 3rd party
software and successfully analyzed the entire source file

\- the prosecutor hinted that the IT guy's testimony is him getting even for
being the (unconfirmed) target of a leak investigation earlier in 2012

So does the prosecutor need to turn over the software-generated report to the
defense? Or only the raw source files which powered the software? That's the
question and I am unqualified to answer. But if it's the former and not the
latter then the prosecutor messed up and was caught red handed.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Did they say which software was used? Was it EnCase? (Edit: Turns out it was
cellbrite. They likely had EnCase for general forensics, at $3k, and cellbrite
is another $8k, for phone-specific forensics).

I find it a little disturbing that the choice of software, and particularly
the cost of it, can mean the difference between going to prison or not.

In this case, the undiscovered files included someone with a "black hand"
holding a gun, text messages related to acquiring a gun, and some kind of
marijuana product. None of those are relevant to the case, but do trigger
prejudice or emotional responses, so it's probably good that they were left
out.

In another case, those might be pictures of a murder victim or some other
critical evidence (of either guilt or innocence). It seems pretty unfair that
accused with a public defender doesn't generally have access to this.

~~~
sejje
I think it's relevant given how much time the prosecution devoted to painting
Trayvon as a child who was merely buying candy and returning from his childish
errand back home, when everything occurred.

If prosecutors want to paint a personal portrait of someone for the sympathy
of the jurors, stuff like this should absolutely be included by the defense.
In fact, I'd say it's their legal obligation to do everything in their power
to have it presented.

~~~
king_jester
> I think it's relevant given how much time the prosecution devoted to
> painting Trayvon as a child who was merely buying candy and returning from
> his childish errand back home, when everything occurred.

I don't know what media you saw when this case started, but Travyon was
described as a young adult, not a young child. Further he was merely buying
candy and going home when he was stalked by Zimmerman, doing nothing that
should trigger suspicion or aggression.

> If prosecutors want to paint a personal portrait of someone for the sympathy
> of the jurors, stuff like this should absolutely be included by the defense.

The extra photos from the cell phone are entirely irrelevant to the facts of
the case and they should not be presented to the court as though they were.
The defense wanted to include those photos to paint a portrait of a scary
black man to a group of white women in the jurors box.

~~~
sejje
I didn't see any media, I'm talking about the prosecution's presentation of
the case during the trial. He was presented as a 17-year-old child (never once
heard "young adult" in ~two weeks of watching).

"Stalked" is pretty aggressive language, and according to GZ, his initial
suspicion was just related to him not knowing who this person was (he knew
most of the residents) walking around at night, in the dark, in the rain, near
the houses. I think that's a pretty reasonable case for someone to feel
suspicious.

And to re-iterate, when prosecutors are trying to paint a portrait of childish
innocence, I think it's perfectly acceptable to introduce evidence to the
contrary. They're irrelevant if we don't try to elicit sympathy from the jury,
but that's not how the prosecution handled things.

