Week 3, Day 1 - Additional Afternoon Information.

NOTE: Please see the post BELOW this one as well, as that post has also been updated through the day.

Below is the summarized information from this afternoon’s trial as told to me. There will probably be errors, or misstatements, but the gist should be pretty on target. If you were there, and have corrections to this information, you can email deepsounding, and he will fix it. (Contact info on the right side navigation bar.) This information may conflict with other information posted by others here today, if so, just remember that this is summarized info as told to me by someone else.

It appears that ayre’s son may indeed be sitting in the courtroom with Solveig and ayres. Identity is not confirmed, but the man is about the right age and entered with ayres and Solveig and sat next to Solveig. Also, the woman with Doron Weinberg was apparently another attorney.

There is a jury pool of 187 who have not been excused for vacations, medical, and other similar reasons. On Tuesday, June 16th 2009 112 of those jurors will be in court for the voir dire process to begin. Judge Freeman stated that voir dire will be finished by this Thursday. Current speculation is that the trial starts in earnest on Tuesday, June 23rd.

The Three Books:
(I’ll try to get this in order, but can’t be entirely sure of chronology.)

During the warrant to search for files to contact in-statute patients, files were found in file cabinets. These cabinets (and possibly other things?) were taken into POLICE CUSTODY, and per the warrant, the PATIENT FILES were sealed and only the special master was allowed to look, to report contact information ONLY to the police officers, who were then to contact those potential victims. IF we’re understanding this correctly, at the time, the special master SAW, but did not access two books in one of the file drawers, and one manila folder which did not appear to look like a patient file. The special master apparently reported ONLY the names and contact information, as per the warrant. The rest of the material (cabinets with books inside) REMAINED in police custody, but were not accessed to preserve integrity in the special master process.

At some point later (something like a year… not sure. This part is a bit fuzzy..) Doron Weinberg complained that two or three potential victims on the “list” did not have their files turned over to the defense, and he asked for the files. (Weinberg says that he stated that they were not included, but he did not ASK for the files.) At this point an officer went to retrieve those two or three files from the file cabinets STILL IN POLICE CUSTODY, and with the written consent of those two or three patients. The officer saw the books laying in the cabinet, but did NOT state this in his report. (Again, story is even more fuzzy right here.) Even later (recently) an officer went into the cabinet (not clear why…) and HE then saw the books and looked in the manila envelope to find additional printed material. He then talked to the second officer, who (I guess) indicated that he saw the books when he looked, and someone had him write a report stating that he had seen the books. (again… fuzzy… could have this a bit wrong, but this is the general gist.)

Of course Weinberg is arguing that the whole thing is inadmissible because the warrant didn’t allow them to “go back” a year later. McCowan argued that there’s plenty of case precedent for this kind of thing, for example, they take a backpack into custody under a warrant, and then later open a pocket to find evidence, as long as the property was taken into and remains within police custody the whole time, there is no violation of the intent of the warrant. On and on they argued. The judge boiled it down to one simple problem: Did the officer(s) have the right to get stuff from the file cabinet. The judged requested additional case examples from McCowan, but seemed to indicate that she feels that McCowan’s example of the backpack applies to this situation. She also indicated that she feels that the officers acted in good faith.

Judge Freeman was also not happy with some procedural errors that McCowan has made; duplicate evidence numbers, asking leading questions of the officers, are two examples. We won’t dwell on this, we want the prosecutor to be focused and sharp.

So what’s in the books?
It is not entirely clear, the books were not shown in great detail; of the two hardcover books, one had a blank red cover, and the other a white cover, apparently the one with the white cover has a picture on the front of young naked children. The manila envelope was described as containing pictures of boys "aged 12-16" in a locker room situation. To paraphrase and summarize the statements that the officers present used to describe the contents of the books: the books had pictures of naked young boys in pornographic “sexual poses.”

EDIT: (DS): There is now an article in the mainstream press with more specific detail, officer names, book titles, etc..:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_12596949


Ok. I need to go wash the vomit out of my mouth now.