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Re: Destruction of notes and data
Posted by:
Jim Mazerat (IP Logged)
Date: February 18, 2007 05:21PM
The answer to your question is yes. Two different judges considered the request and compared it to the requirements of the Jenks Act. The Act restricts the defendant's access to such material until after the witness has testified in court against him, pretrial discovery of such material is not permitted. So by the law the defendant is not eligible to obtain this information until after the investigator testifies. There was no other information in the notes.
Pat, I think this is right on point. It is a case of a policy that does not give access to the original notes because it allows the original notes to be destroyed after they have been transcribed. And we have a law that states the transcribed information does not have to be revealed to the other side until after the witness testifies.
Based on the information above this question was just answered in the research Terry did on the Brown case. The FBI does have an established policy that all agents follow. This policy allows agent to transcribe their handwritten field notes and then destroy the handwritten copy. The court of appeals held this is an acceptable policy. There is nothing in the law that requires that notes made in the course of an investigation be preserved after the notes have served their purpose of assisting in the preparation of interview reports. I can see not reason this would not hold true with the investigator field notes.