Friday, July 11, 2008

"You can't handle the evidence!"

A motion in US District Court in Lexington over the Fayette jail inmate abuse scandal defendants' request to view sealed evidence has been set aside by Judge James Todd. A hearing scheduled for this morning has been cancelled.

11:45 update: The federal court online document program which has been down all morning has come back up. It looks like the defendants asked for two kinds of evidence and were granted access to one of them. The other, called Brady material, is evidence that might be beneficial to the defense and includes names of witnesses who have received immunity for their testimony. The prosecution said there was no such evidence but agreed to provide any if it becomes available.

A third type of evidence, called Jencks Act evidence was requested by the defense and denied for now by the prosecution on the grounds that no such evidence exists until the trial starts. When witness testimony begins at trial, Jencks Act evidence would include any statements, written or oral, by a witness including grand jury testimony. There is a pre-trial conference set for July 23 and the jury trial begins August 18 before Judge Karen Caldwell.