Lawyers Accuse Federal Prosecutors of Routinely Spying on Defense Strategies
3rd June 2016
Oh, they wouldn’t do that, would they?
The allegations surfaced days ago on the eve of a scheduled trial, which is now delayed. In court papers filed May 26, lawyers alleged that prosecutors had secretly gained access to discovery document files assembled by the defense team.
The lawyers wrote that an assistant U.S. attorney informed them in April that an FBI agent had received CDs containing duplicates of discovery files the defense had assembled and scanned from the more than 200 boxes of seized government evidence made available to them.
The duplicates, they wrote, were provided by a government-contracted service that makes copies of government discovery documents that defense lawyers want to inspect.
The lawyers said the owner of the service told them in an email that he has routinely provided the FBI with duplicates of the set-aside files — and not just in their case.
“It appears that this practice of surreptitiously duplicating the discovery work-product of defense counsel in the Southern District of Florida has been the norm for at least the last ten years,” lawyers representing Salo Schapiro, a Broward County doctor charged with health-care fraud, stated in court papers.
Oops.