Opinion ID: 172367
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Mr. Trentadue's Motion for Discovery and District Court's Ruling

Text: In February 2007, eight months after the FBI's production of the additional document, Mr. Trentadue filed the motion that generated this appeal. The motion seeks authorization to take videotaped depositions of Terry Nichols, who was convicted for his role in the Oklahoma City Bombing, and David Paul Hammer, a death-row inmate who claimed to have discussed the bombing in detail with Timothy McVeigh while the latter was on death row. In the motion Mr. Trentadue reiterated his allegation that the FBI's production of documents had been in bad faith because other responsive documentsespecially ones created before the bombinghad to be in FBI files. The depositions of Nichols and Hammer, he asserted, would set forth facts establishing a link between Elohim City and the Murrah Building bombing, thereby establishing FBI Defendants' apparent complicity in that crime through informants, id. Vol. 4 at 988, and would provide evidence of FBI Defendants' bad faith response to Plaintiff's FOIA requests, id. at 1008. To support his motion, Mr. Trentadue submitted declarations by Hammer and Nichols, both of whom gave accounts of alleged involvement of government informants in the bombing. The FBI opposed the motion, arguing: (1) the district court lacked jurisdiction to grant discovery because the district court had already resolved all issues in the case and had no authority under FOIA to order discovery designed only to further a private investigation into terrorism; and (2) Mr. Trentadue had provided no grounds for reopening the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) and had presented no evidence to support a suspicion that Defendants had inadequately responded to his FOIA request. Stating that it had never closed the case, the district court granted Mr. Trentadue's discovery request. With respect to the merits of the discovery request, the court cited its earlier order stating that [u]pon motion, the court will allow Plaintiff to conduct discovery should the FBI fail to produce documents and/or records responsive to [his] FOIA requests. Id. at 1155 (internal quotation marks omitted; first brackets in original). The court then explained: In light of (1) the court's previous finding that the FBI's original search was not reasonably calculated to locate responsive documents; (2) the troubling absence of documents to which other documents referred; and (3) the information that Plaintiff has thus far discovered from Terry Lynn Nichols and David Paul Hammer, the court is persuaded that it continues to maintain jurisdiction over this action, and, furthermore, that by allowing the requested depositions, Plaintiff may be better able to identify the existence of other records responsive to his FOIA request that have not yet been produced. Id. The FBI filed a motion for reconsideration. It reiterated its earlier arguments, but also stressed that discovery in a FOIA action should be limited to the scope of the agency's search for responsive documents and its indexing and classification procedures, not expanded into a fishing expedition into the investigatory action taken by the agency. . . . Id. at 1161. Because Nichols and Hammer lacked any knowledge of the FBI's search for records, the FBI argued, deposing them would be tantamount to conduct[ing] discovery into the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, an unprecedented move given that neither Mr. Trentadue, nor the court, cited any authority allowing for depositions of nonagency personnel. Id. The FBI also argued, alternatively, that the court should prohibit video recording of the depositions out of concern for prison security. The district court denied Defendants' motion except that it ordered that the video show only the deponents and placed other restrictions on the use of video-recording equipment. The court closed the case, but added that [i]f Plaintiff is correct and through these depositions he discovers the existence of records responsive to Plaintiff's FOIA request, he may file a motion to reopen the case. Id. at 1313.