During the first week of trial the prosecutor finally delivered the guts of Trayvon Martin's phone. They had previously turned over what they called a data dump of that phone. Through genius, the defense forensic expert, Mr. Conner, also a lawyer, was able to measure a volume of data against another access to that data from somewhere, not my forte, and the numbers didn't match. He could see that there were 600 un-retrieved photos and a zillion texts. He got them out with this software called Cell Bright (written phonetically) printed it all and brought it to court.
When the defense tried to introduce the photos and the texts, the prosecution objected to the introduction of it all on the grounds of relevance, surprise and authentication (I would have thought prejudice more than probative but I don't remember hearing that.) There were 8000 texts but the ones the defense wanted to introduce were those about 1) TM's fighting and how he beat a guy two rounds out of three but the guy hasn't bled enough. His friend also texts him that he had better quit fighting or he would be suspended from school, again. 2) Photos of TM smoking dope and talking about that's what he's doing 3) A photo of a hand gun he is holding and saying in texts that he's holding it plus texts about the attempt to both buy and sell handguns. Oh, and some pictures of TM posing with his biceps pumped.
The court kept it all out because it couldn't be authenticated. Court said any seven year old can use your phone no matter how many passwords there are. It was pointed out that Mr. Connor had to use soft ware and Don West's pate lit on fire. The defense said that had they gotten this information in time and not during the first week of trial, the defense could have brought the people involved to court to authenticate the info and they could have been deposed.
O'Mara was asked in an interview today, 7/13, what his impression of Bernie De La Rionda is and he got even more narrow between the eyes and said that Bernie is a career prosecutor, now very senior, so that he is a) generally up against public defenders (God bless 'em) and that he and Don West did not conduct themselves like public defenders, and b) that Bernie gets to cherry pick his cases and he only picks the ones with overwhelming evidence so that discovery issues are seldom brought to light. That results in Bernie playing fast and loose with discovery. Isn't that elegant? Called the man names and never broke his gait.
So now there has been a motion files for sanctions for discovery violations coming before the court next week, I think. Pretty soon anyway. Now we hear a State's employee, might even be a lawyer, has been fired. Oops. The information was clearly relevant. GZ said the suspicious person looked like he was on drugs. The public party line immediately became that TM was a child with skittles profiled by GZ as a doper (because he was young and black shhh). The ME found THC at the autopsy which was kept out because the ME could not say what effect that might have had.
I think there will be fireworks.