All right. Good morning, counsel. Back on the record in the Simpson matter. The Defendant is again present before the Court with his counsel, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Scheck and Mr. Neufeld. The People are represented by Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Darden. All right. Counsel, we had two matters to take up before the jury joins us. Mr. Neufeld, was there any additional authority you wanted to bring to the Court's attention regarding discovery of reports on other cases alleged to have been created on June 14th by Miss Mazzola?
Your Honor, I don't have the authority of other cases with that particular fact pattern. I would simply, you know, remind the Court that there are other United States Supreme Court cases, such as Napue versus Illinois, Giglio, cases like that, which talk about if there is some piece of data which would directly contradict the testimony being proffered by the Prosecution witness, then the Prosecutor has a duty to turn that over. In this case it is just our position that they could not produce a contemporaneous document that would support Miss Mazzola's position that she was filling out property reports on the morning of June 14th.
All right. The Court's ruling will stand. All right. As to the production of the various pieces of evidence, I have received the People's written objections. Mr. Neufeld, do you have any comment?
Your Honor, the one point I would make is that--I mean, I don't think there is any question as a matter of relevance that I am entitled to confront this witness with the actual items that she collected and ask her whether or not those are in fact the items that she collected and the envelopes that she put the evidence in that day and the bindles that she used the very next day. I am entitled to ask her those questions because that is the beginning of the chain of custody in this case. And as the Court knows, the Defense has been attacking the chain of custody in its opening statement and throughout this case and intends to continue to do so, so I don't think there is any question about relevancy. Their only issue might be that some of the things we asked for may be too difficult or burdensome. I would be willing to compromise, your Honor, and not have them produce the newer bindles that were created when portions of samples went out to other laboratories. I just wanted them to produce the original coin envelopes and the original bindles that were produced by Fung and Mazzola on the 13th and 14th.
Oh, sorry. I did provide a written list to the People and the items are item 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52. So we are just talking about the coin envelopes and the bindles, the originals, not any of the new ones for these items.
Well, counsel still has not shown any plausible justification as to why he needs the actual envelopes, as opposed to photographs, and I believe that we have photographs of all of these items. And more importantly, your Honor, what counsel is asking is not merely as simple as it sounds on its face. He has not really come up with a list of the items that he wants because many of these items were rebooked as new item numbers when we are talking about the bindles that were originally used for the purposes of obtaining the item. By the way, it seems to me that the bindles themselves have no relevance in terms of chain of custody and chain of custody would be based on what was on the coin envelope itself, but it would be a number corresponding to a number of an item that was collected at the crime scene. In order to trace the bindles, what we would could have to do is we would have to look first in the original coin envelope to determine whether they were there, and in some instances the original bindles were made out to an outside lab and then in a new transmittal coin envelope and then when they came back they would have been rebooked as a new number. We gave one example in our letter just to try to illustrate the problems of a particular item that has been sent out in a number of different transmittal envelopes where portions of the swatches are being used. Those items may have been sent out not only in new coin envelopes, but in new transmittal bindles. But if the entire sample was sent out, then it is possible that the original bindle was sent then out to an outside laboratory and the administrative burden of tracking this down, which can be done through the records, should not fall on the Prosecution, so the Defense should say which items they want, not just by saying I want item no. 1 and the original bindle, but by saying I want item no. 1 and item no. 385 or whatever perhaps that original bindle ended up as after it came back from the laboratory. They can do that just as easily as we can. They have all the records. In fact, they can do it more easily because not only do they have our record, but they have their own record because they have seen these materials in the original bindles and presumably created their own documentation of that, which they have not provided to us. So they are in just as good a position, if not better than the Prosecution, to do this. They have also tested--
Well, my objection is two--is three-fold. No. 1, that there is no justification for this. I mean normally for discovery, if you are going to analogize this to discovery, either it comes under--under pre-proposition 115 law, you have to show a plausible justification, which was some threshold standard.
But your Honor, I don't see how the two of them are connected. What I'm just saying--
But we are not using the original. We have used photographs. We have used other means of accomplishing the same ends. And it also does not address the issue as to what are we going to do with the blood swatches that are still in some of these items? They can still be tested. And so there are a number of concerns from this perspective, and not the least of which is why don't they identify--they can go through the record and do the tracking and provide us with more specific requests as to exactly what they want. I don't see why the burden necessarily falls on the Prosecution's shoulders to do that tracking for them just to say I want item number of--
All right. You have made the point about the correlation of items. What other point do you have to make?
Well, there were three points: Plausible justification, no showing as to why he needs these items. No. 2, overly broad and unduly burdensome for the reasons that I suggested with the tracking and not identifying what he wants. And no. 3, that these are biological samples that can still be tested and what are we supposed to do with the actual swatches, because he is saying he wants those, too.
I'm not going to ask the witness to open up the bindle anyway to take swatches out of it. I don't care about that. Certainly with respect to them being biological specimens, they have been thawed out several times before, sometimes for many, many hours. What we are talking about here is just bringing them over from Piper Tech, which is not that far away, so that they can be produced here in Court.
Oh, sure. If you look at the letter, your Honor, the letter says that--in the main paragraph it says that: "When laboratories were not sent out the entire sample, that they were sent out in new transmittal bindles and new transmittal coin envelopes." I'm not interested in the new transmittal envelopes which got new numbers, nor the new transmittal bindles which got new numbers. I'm only interested in the original coin envelope and the original bindles. And by the way, every one of those coin envelopes and the bindle has a number on it, the original number. If subsequently, even though it is not explained in this letter, an original bindle was also given a separate number, you would still have the original number on the original bindle. It is there. This is not difficult for them to produce. That is why I'm saying to the Court that I'm willing to give up all those new transmittal bindles, all those new transmittal envelopes with the new numbers. I just want the original ones and that is something that they can get in 15 minutes.
Your Honor, we asked do inspect these items on different occasions, for the scientists to look inside them, and they had no problem producing them for the scientists. They did it every single time. I originally asked for this on Friday. They can do this within a half hour; simply produce the original coin envelope and the original bindles. They have a computer tracking system which shows where these items went. That is all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for any of the new ones, your Honor.
All right. Thank you, counsel. All right. The Los Angeles Police Department is ordered to produce items 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 44, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 and 52 forthwith. All right. Counsel, before we start with the jury, let me just give you a couple of admonitions. One, we are getting sloppy about the speaking objections. I have reissued a revised direction to counsel regarding attorney conduct. You are to read that and abide by it. I have probably sustained a thousand objections so far in this trial regarding argumentative questions. For counsel's edification, if the question is a statement rather than a question to the witness, I'm going to sustain the objection. If I have to do that too many more times, I'm going to admonish counsel in front of the jury that that manner of questioning is improper. Mr. Neufeld, I don't mean to single you out, but would you just try to slow down a little with your pace for the Court reporters because it is both your pace and the Brooklyn accent that they are having difficulty with.
All right. Also, at noon I want to meet with co-lead counsel in chambers for about fifteen minutes.
Your Honor, just so there is no misunderstanding with their compliance of what you just ordered, can you specify that those items they are to produce are the original coin envelopes and the original bindles?
It depends on how much we get done today. That is actually a prospective one o'clock on that new order.
How about if you don't want to produce it, I will suppress it?
I'm sure you can have one of your many minions do that.
Mr. Neufeld, I don't mean to single you out, but would you just try to slow down a little with your pace for the Court reporters because it is both your pace and the Brooklyn accent that they are having difficulty with.
I just want the original ones and that is something that they can get in 15 minutes.