A D.C. federal district judge threatened to hold Department of Justice lawyers in contempt today over their failure to produce documents on a Guantánamo detainee.
In a written order, Judge Emmett Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia gave the government’s lawyers until Tuesday to explain why they had been unable to produce potentially exculpatory information about the detainee, Saeed Abdullah Batarfi. The judge first ordered them on Jan. 16 to produce documents.
“The Court will not tolerate any further delay by the government,” Sullivan wrote.
In his order, Sullivan also worried that many of the lawyers handling evidence for the government were simply not qualified to do so. He demanded a written statement from the government affirming that the attorneys reviewing documents in the case “are familiar with the meaning of exculpatory evidence as set forth in Brady v. Maryland.”
So-called Brady rules require prosecutors to hand over information to defense attorneys that might prove a client’s innocence. In an earlier filing, the Justice Department said it would be “unfeasible” to allow only its own prosecutors, who generally have Brady experience, to review detainee evidence. Right now, much of that material is initially inspected by attorneys from the Department of Defense.
“The government’s argument raises the disturbing implication that the attorneys conducting the review in this and other habeas cases (who presumably are not criminal prosecutors from DOJ) do not have the necessary experience with and knowledge of the government’s Brady obligations,” Sullivan wrote.
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