Opinion ID: 63
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Initial Motion for a New Trial

Text: Even though he had been convicted and the Court had denied his motion under the All Writs Act, Brown continued to employ Owen, Allen, and Reames to test the Owen laptop copies and the jury presentation. On May 31, 2005, Brown filed a motion pursuant to Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, or in the alternative, for (1) an order directing the government to produce to the defense for testing the original Nagra recorder and original Nagra SNST reel-to-reel audio tapes, [11] and the original VHS camcorder and VHS video tapes of conversations between Brown and Noonan, and (2) an evidentiary hearing. [12] In support of this motion, Brown averred that his defense experts, meticulously had tested the Owen laptop copies and the jury presentation, and had concluded after painstaking, time-consuming work that the Harrisburg tapes proffered to Owen at the FBI offices were not original recordings, and that anomalies associated with computerized editing found in the Owen laptop copies and the jury presentation suggested that the government had edited both the Harrisburg tapes and the jury presentation. Consequently, Brown believed that the Harrisburg tapes and the jury presentation could not be deemed true and accurate records of the events that took place on the dates in question. The government and the defense subsequently entered into an agreement, memorialized in an August 8, 2005 letter from defense counsel to AUSA Daniel, in which it agreed to provide the defense with the original audio and video tapes of the March 13, March 30, and May 21 Noonan conversations, a new set of FBI created first-generation duplicates of these recordings, the original Nagra SNST recorder on which the audio recordings of the conversations initially were made, and an additional working Nagra recorder. The letter agreement expressed the government's belief that the process of production should take no more than two weeks. On August 10, 2005, after being notified of the agreement, the District Court denied Brown's motion as moot, noting it also would be premature to rule on the motion at that time because Brown still was determining what, if any, newly discovered evidence existed.