Park City Kathy Catches a Break
Her personal laptop probably had the juiciest love letters to you know who…also the most explicit confessions of misconduct and lawbreaking. Will it matter? Who knows? I’m seriously asking… who knows?
DOVER, Del. – A Delaware judge has chastised prosecutors for failing to turn over information to the defense in a criminal corruption case against State Auditor Kathy McGuiness, issuing a ruling that also exposed weaknesses in the state’s cyber forensic capabilities.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Superior Court Judge William Carpenter Jr. prohibited prosecutors from using material from three laptops that were seized during a search of McGuiness’ officer in September 2021. Carpenter said that prohibition was an appropriate sanction for prosecutors’ failure to provide information contained on laptops to the defense until April 6th, more than six months after the search.
However, Carpenter refused to grant a defense motion to dismiss the indictment against McGuiness.
This judge clearly intends to engineer an acquittal.
Some interesting things came out of the WDEL article.
“failing to turn over information to the defense ” – it took three months to decrypt Park City’s laptops, and by the time it was turned over to the defense, it was deemed not enougn time.
The laptops were decrypted by the Delaware State Police High Tech Crimes Unit by late December.
In January, the DOJ learned that it couldn’t use the Delaware State Police forensic search tools because those tools were limited to handling interstate crimes against children. [WTF?]
“Under these circumstances, it is difficult for the court to find a Brady violation because there was only a month delay from the time the state gained access to the material to when they delivered that material to the defense,” wrote Carpenter. He also noted that “the inability of the state to obtain access to these documents for nearly six months speaks volumes as to the technical forensic capability of state investigators.”
It’s good the judge is highlighting DE’s forensic insufficency (who will be the first to sponsor a bill to upgrade our capabilities?) But I wish he had picked a different case to make his point.
This raises questions:
Did the police unit slow-walk the analysis?
Did Jennings know it would take that long?
How important is the laptop evidence to the case?
Where will her re-election party be held?
Her legal jeopardy aside, I hear there may be a better than decent primary challenger.
Gotta ask, what are they waiting for?