Opinion ID: 2832197
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Double Deletion Theory

Text: The Government’s second theory contends that a rational juror could have found that Katakis double deleted emails on all of the computers except Swanger’s Dell, and that, if he did so with the requisite intent, he violated the statute. We shall assume, without deciding, that double deletion would constitute the requisite concealment or destruction element of § 1519. However, even with that assumption, no reasonable juror could have found on this record that the Government carried its burden to show that double deletion actually occurred. In this context, “double deletion” means that the Government sought to first prove that Katakis pressed the delete key after selecting emails in the inbox of the email client, moving them to the deleted items folder or a recycling bin. The Government’s theory asserted that Katakis then deleted the emails a second time, with the intent that they would fall into the free space of the hard drive so they could be permanently overwritten by DriveScrubber. This theory relies on two pieces of evidence, one direct and one circumstantial. First, the Government points to direct evidence that Swanger observed Katakis deleting emails. wholly separate and distinct from the emails, even existed. There is no evidence that Katakis knowingly destroyed these records. It is not clear to us that Katakis could have been aware that the destruction of the transmission logs was “practically certain” to result from running DriveScrubber. 16 UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS Given that fact, and the evidence that Katakis installed DriveScrubber, the Government contends that a rational juror could have inferred that he had double deleted the emails to make them available for DriveScrubber to overwrite. Second, the Government argues that a rational juror could have inferred double deletion from the fact that the ten incriminating emails were not found on any computer other than Swanger’s Dell. There are again significant factual flaws in the Government’s argument. First, Swanger never offered any testimony that he observed Katakis do anything on Katakis’s Dell or the GD Mail Server. With regard to Swanger’s ASUS, Swanger declined to testify that he actually observed Katakis deleting anything, much less double-deleting the emails. Swanger testified only that he saw Katakis “clicking and moving things around.” Swanger never testified that he noticed that any files or emails were missing on his ASUS, whereas he testified that many emails were missing from his Dell. In the absence of direct evidence of double deletion, the Government relies on a chain of circumstantial inferences that a rational juror would have to credit to find that Katakis double deleted the emails. The rational juror would first have to find that Katakis intended to destroy the ten incriminating emails; as to that point, there was sufficient evidence—the installation of DriveScrubber. But the evidence that he carried out this intent comes from a single fact: that the ten incriminating emails were not found on Katakis’s Dell, Swanger’s ASUS, or the GD Mail Server. Both experts testified that they expected to find the emails on those computers. In their absence, the Government argues that a rational juror would be entitled to conclude that Katakis UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS 17 double deleted the emails. However, the Government never provided the jury with any mechanism that would explain how Katakis removed the emails from the three computers, given that, as both experts ultimately agreed, double deletion on the email client does not send an email to the free space, where DriveScrubber could have destroyed it. The Government’s theory is analogous to one that we rejected in United States v. Lo, 231 F.3d 471 (9th Cir. 2000). In Lo, the defendant was charged with mail fraud, which required the government to prove that the defendant actually mailed a document in furtherance of the fraud scheme. Id. at 475. The only evidence that the government could muster to show that the document was mailed was testimony from an employee that a document Lo submitted would have been mailed in the ordinary course of its business. Id. at 475–76. No one testified that they ever saw the document, no one testified that they had sent it, there was no record it had existed, and no one testified to receiving it. Id. at 476. We found that this evidence was insufficient, and the inferences that the jury was required to draw too “attenuated,” to support a conviction for mail fraud. Id. at 477. In Lo, we were particularly concerned that the evidence of fraudulent intent, for which there was sufficient evidence, might lead a juror to overlook the factual gaps in the government’s proof. Id. We are faced with a similar concern here. In Lo, there was no evidence that the document in question even existed, id. at 476, while there were specific emails at issue in the record here. But as in Lo, the evidence of the crime itself was attenuated. There was no direct evidence in the record that Katakis deleted the emails on his Dell, Swanger’s ASUS, or the GD Mail Server, much less double-deleted them. The evidence of Katakis’s intent was truly overwhelming, but the 18 UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS Government’s attempts to prove that he actually performed the acts of which he was accused, were incredibly weak. The Government’s primary theory, that Katakis double deleted the emails and then used DriveScrubber to overwrite them, completely collapsed. Had this theory been available to the jury, the jurors would have been entitled to conclude that Katakis double deleted the emails, because, according to Medlin’s initial testimony, this step is the necessary predicate for making the emails available for DriveScrubber to overwrite. The Government conceded that it was impossible for DriveScrubber to overwrite the emails, but only the possibility that DriveScrubber overwrote the emails supported the inference of double deletion. Otherwise, both experts testified that they would have expected to find the emails. The Government now argues that the jury could have inferred double deletion from the fact that the ten incriminating emails could not be found on any of the three computers, raising an inference that they were somehow destroyed by a process that included double deletion. Under Lo, this fact might be enough, if the Government had provided any explanation that the jury could credit to explain why the emails were not present. The Government was entirely unable to explain (a) at trial, (b) in closing, (c) before the district court, or now (d) on appeal, where the ten incriminating emails, their traces, or their remnants went. Indeed, the one theory that the Government provided, that DriveScrubber was used to overwrite the emails, was discredited and withdrawn. At closing, the Government relied on Medlin’s eleventh-hour theory that email remnants, not the emails themselves, had been overwritten by DriveScrubber. After the collapse of the primary DriveScrubber theory, the Government was left with no UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS 19 theory at all to explain what happened to the emails and why neither expert could find any trace of them.5 The absence of the emails eliminates the logical inference of double-deletion. Both experts testified that they expected to find the emails if they were double deleted, but they also explained that it was impossible for DriveScrubber to delete them. As a result, double deletion cannot explain the absence of the emails. That absence, far from corroborating the Government’s theory, demonstrates a gaping hole in its logic. Without a mechanism to make double deletion a necessary inference to the cause of the emails’ absence, a rational juror could not conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that double deletion occurred. In essence, there was no evidence to support the Government’s theory, only speculation that relied heavily on evidence of Katakis’s intent while absolving the Government of its obligation to prove the act. In short, there was no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that the emails in question were in fact double deleted. 5 The only other potential theory disclosed by the record was that the email client or Exchange automatically overwrote the emails after they were double deleted. The Government does not press this theory on appeal and it did not raise it to the jury at trial. Nevertheless, we conclude that this possibility also does not raise an inference of double deletion and it does not explain the absence of any trace of the ten emails. There was no evidence at all of what the time frame for such automatic deletion would have been, or even whether the automatic deletion feature was activated on the relevant computers. Further, both experts testified that they would have expected to find, at the very least, traces of the ten emails on the computers in question. There was no evidence in the record that the automatic deletion process, as opposed to a program like DriveScrubber, would have eliminated all traces of the emails. Ultimately, there is no explanation in the record for why none of the ten emails, or any trace of them, could not be found on any computer, including the GD Mail Server. 20 UNITED STATES V. KATAKIS We emphasize we are not requiring that the Government disprove innocent explanations why the emails were not present on any of the three computers. The Government is correct that, following our decision in Nevils, authority indicating that we may find the evidence insufficient to convict where there is an innocent explanation for inculpatory conduct, such as United States v. Delgado, 357 F.3d 1061, 1068 (9th Cir. 2004), is no longer viable. See Nevils, 598 F.3d at 1167 (overruling precedents that “strayed from the test established in Jackson, and made ‘plausible’ exculpatory constructions” of the evidence). However, this was not a case where a government theory competed with a defense theory. Instead, the Government in this case presented no theory at all to explain to the jury how the emails were destroyed, a fact that was critical to the chain of inferences required to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Katakis double deleted the emails. In essence, the Government again invited the jury to do what Nevils forbids: engage in mere speculation on critical elements of proof. Id.