Opinion ID: 178775
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Was the evidence made reasonably available to Wright?

Text: On November 14, 2006, the parties entered into a stipulation and protective order outlining Wright's access to a bit-by-bit image copy of Wright's hard drive. The stipulation provided for the evidence to remain in the care, custody and control of the United States Attorney's Office. Defense counsel and the defense expert, Rick Lavaty, were permitted to access the evidence; the stipulation provided that they would be buzzed in during regular office hours to the U.S. Attorney's Office and that when it was not being analyzed, the hard drive was to remain in a secure location. The U.S. Attorney's Office established a secure space for the defense expert to set up his own equipment and conduct the examination. If it was necessary, the expert was permitted to leave his computer and the hard drive running overnight. At the conclusion of each session, the hard drive was to be returned to an authorized employee at the office where it would be placed back in a secure location. The government agreed not to look at any material the defense team may leave in the secure space, including, but not limited to, exhibits and documents, nor ... perform any forensic analysis of the bit-by-bit hard drive provided to the defense team. If the computer was left running overnight, the government promised to make reasonable attempts to be sure no one uses the offered secure space in the defense expert's absence. After the parties entered into the stipulation, Lavaty assembled a computer forensics cart to take over to the U.S. Attorney's Office for his examinations. On November 27, 2006, defense counsel told the district court that Lavaty felt comfortable with the stipulation and protective order and planned on commencing his examination. Counsel estimated that Lavaty needed approximately 150 hours for the full forensics exam and to create all the exhibits necessary for trial. The defense was permitted to access the evidence for fourteen monthsthat is, from November 14, 2006 (the date of the stipulation), to the start of the trial on January 17, 2008. Over the course of that time, defense counsel raised various budget, timing, and staffing problems that counsel maintained were preventing the defense from adequately examining the hard drive. On January 4, 2008, less than two weeks before trial (which had been adjourned numerous times up to that point), Wright moved to continue trial based on Lavaty's inability to finish his examination, citing Lavaty's other obligations with the FPD office. Counsel also noted that her own schedule and work demands had prevented her from concentrating fully on the case. The district court denied the continuance. Wright renewed the motion one week later, on January 11, 2008, but it was denied again. Wright argues that the evidence was not made reasonably available to him because the district court failed to recognize the defense office's budget and staffing problems, Lavaty's other duties with the FPD office, and the court's earlier denial of Wright's request for an outside expert, which was denied because it was deemed too costly. Interpretation of the Adam Walsh Act is an issue of first impression in this circuit; indeed, the Seventh Circuit is the only Court of Appeals yet to consider the Act. See United States v. Shrake, 515 F.3d 743 (7th Cir.2008) (rejecting a facial challenge to the Act's constitutionality). There are a number of district court cases considering whether defendants were given ample opportunity for inspection, viewing, and examination at a Government facility of child pornography material, yet none of those cases is particularly helpful to Wright. Wright principally relies on United States v. Knellinger, 471 F.Supp.2d 640 (E.D.Va.2007). There, the district court concluded that the defendant had not been given an ample opportunity to conduct an examination of the evidence and thus ordered the government to turn over to the defendant a copy of the hard drive. Id. at 650. In Knellinger, the defendant intended to pursue the theory that the child pornography he was charged with possessing was not produced using real minors. Id. at 647; see Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 122 S.Ct. 1389, 152 L.Ed.2d 403 (2002). The defendant's expert witnesses, who would have to be privately retained, testified that they would not agree to work on the case if they could only perform their examination at a government facility. Knellinger, 471 F.Supp.2d at 647-48. One expert testified that while he normally charged approximately $135,000 for his services in a child pornography case, he would charge approximately $540,000, excluding moving expenses, in a case in which he had to analyze the material away from his office. Id. at 647. He also testified that even if he were to perform his examination at a government facility, he wouldn't be able to service the client or the attorney effectively. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). As a result, he would not agree to work on a case like Knellinger's. Similarly, another expert testified that he would not work on the case because of the difficulty associated with moving equipment to, and adequately performing his analytical work in, a Government facility. Id. at 648. Therefore, the terms of the Adam Walsh Act effectively precluded the defendant from pursuing his only viable defense. Knellinger is easily distinguishable. Unlike in Knellinger, Wright's forensic expert, Lavaty, claimed he was comfortable with the parties' terms for providing Wright access to the hard drive. Wright was afforded fourteen months to conduct his examination and does not claim that the agreed upon terms entered into by the parties precluded Wright from pursuing a viable defense theory. Rather, Wright bases much of his argument on the fact that prior to the Adam Walsh Act being passed into law, the district court found that the government's proposed terms of access would hamper defendant's preparation of this case, and thus ordered the government to provide Wright a mirror copy of the hard drive. [18] However, that ruling bears little, if any, relevance to whether the government's proposed terms provided Wright with ample opportunity to examine the evidence. Wright's argument essentially boils down to the following contention: the Adam Walsh Act requires that the defendant and the government have equal access to the child pornography evidence. Yet this is not what the Act provides. It provides only that the defendant be given ample opportunity to examine the evidence. In any event, none of the cases that Wright cites is apposite. For example, in United States v. Cadet, 727 F.2d 1453, 1469 (9th Cir.1984), we held that the government is required to identify witnesses to the crime whose testimony may be exculpatory. It was in that context that we observed that [b]oth sides have an equal right, and should have an equal opportunity, to interview [such witnesses]. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Nor does the Seventh Circuit's decision in Shrake help Wright. In Shrake, after rejecting the defendant's facial challenge to § 3509(m), the court expressed its concern over the fact that the prosecution provided its own private expert consultant an exact copy of the hard drive, but denied the defense the same. 515 F.3d at 746. The court stated that rather than asking the district court to foreclose testimony by the prosecution's expert, which the district court denied doing, [t]he appropriate reliefwhich defense counsel never soughtwould have been access on equal terms. Id. at 747. Shrake had no occasion to define what it meant by access on equal terms. However, by access, the court appears to have been referring to the types of forensic tools each side had available to it in performing its examination. Indeed, the court noted that Shrake's counsel did not seek access on equal terms, perhaps because the prosecution's expert did not use any forensic tool that was unavailable to the defense expert when he examined the hard drive. Id. Thus, any defense request for access on equal terms would have been pointless. In any event, Shrake clearly does not hold that the defendant and the government must be given an equal amount of time to examine the evidence, which is Wright's main contention. We need not define the exact parameters of what it means to give a defendant ample opportunity to examine child-pornography evidence. Wright was permitted to access the hard drive for a period of fourteen months in a secure location within the U.S. Attorney's Office. Wright makes no claim that the parties' arrangement threatened to disrupt the attorney-client relationship or that the defense team's work product was compromised in any way. In short, Wright was given ample opportunity for inspection, viewing, and examination under the Act. See United States v. Cordy, 560 F.3d 808, 816 (8th Cir.2009) (in a case governed by the Adam Walsh Act, defense counsel had adequate time for trial preparation based on having access to the computer data for three months).