All the Evidence the Government Will Present In the Silk Road Trial Is Online

apexcp writes: In less than a month, one of the biggest trials of 2015 will begin in New York City. The full list of government evidence and defense objections found its way online recently, shedding light on both the prosecutor's courtroom strategy and the defense team's attempted rebuttals. Also important is what's not presented as evidence. There's not a single piece of forensic documentation about how the FBI originally found Silk Road servers, an act the defense has called "blatantly criminal."

Comments

Re:if there is no evidence presented in how they..

[ganjadude]

its happened to me

I was pulled over doing 52 in a 45. the problem was there was no posted speed limit (the sign was covered with burlap, road work was starting within a day or 2) In NY, if there is no posted speed limit, the speed limit is 55, so I was not speeding per the law. After the fact, they found a dime bag in my car (dumb friend, fell out of his pocket onto my back seat)

It took me 6 months of going to court but after proving that the speed limit sign was obscured (by the town) I got the initial contact thrown out. And because the cop had no right to pull me over, he had no right to search my car, therefore the possession charge was also thrown out

Re:if there is no evidence presented in how they..

[meta-monkey]

No, what happened to you was odd. It's always been the case that if the cop had probable cause for conducting the search the results are admissible. If he heard screaming coming from inside your house and thought someone was being murdered so he busted inside but it turned out it was just the TV (but he genuinely thought it was real) he can still bust you for the brick of cocaine sitting on your coffee table.

So he could always get you despite being mistaken on the facts. Now it's the case he doesn't even have to be right on law. The Supreme Court just ruled that the cop doesn't even have to know the law he stopped you under.

What is inadmissible, though, is evidence obtained intentionally without warrant or cause. The cop cannot break into your house without a warrant or probable cause and snoop around, find something and then come back in the daylight with a warrant and bust you. And that's the question here. I don't understand how they can present the evidence of wrong doing if they don't say how they obtained the evidence. If they illegally hacked into his servers...then no, it shouldn't be admissible. There has to be a valid chain of custody, and we don't know if the chain is valid if we don't know where it started.

The defense is being a little hyperbolic

[sirwired]

While the prosecution will probably have to cough up the goods after a hearing ordering them to do so, I'm pretty sure not dotting the proverbial i's during pre-trial briefing doesn't qualify as "blatantly criminal".

Re:if there is no evidence presented in how they..

[anagama]

There's some scary Supreme Court precedent just handed down. The cop can be ignorant of the law, i.e., think you broke a law when you didn't, and then conduct a search, and that search is now legal thanks to a brand new Supreme Court decision. That's right, ignorance of the law is no excuse, except for cops.

Pick your poison:
http://thinkprogress.org/justi...

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

Of course this is supposed to be limited to "reasonable" ignorance, but look at Smith v. Maryland. A one time, short term, metadata collection on a specific individual where there was certainly probable cause for a warrant if the cops had not been lazy, is today interpreted to mean that all metadata can be collected for every person, for all time, in the absence of probable cause. Or how the Executive branch interprets "imminent" to include "maybe possibly at some point of time in not so near future." This ruling is a free pass for the cops to do whatever the hell they want and claim ignorance of the law. Just give it 30 years.