13.Search-Warrant Challenges and Evidence Stipulations
53 linesRICK HUBBARD: Your Honor, one thing, I guess we need clarification from the Defense on is, we had hearings on the car stop, we had hearings on the statements resulting from the car stop. But obviously we are looking at, from the car itself and there was a search warrant, we don't know if they are challenging the search of the vehicle. So we need to know that.
BOYD YOUNG: Your Honor, my understanding is that the Court had made its final ruling regarding the legality of the stop. All of those warrants that were subsequently taken were after Mr. Jones expressly refused to give consent. And we have, we have entered into a number of stipulations with the State with regard to the chain of custody of the car. We have entered into stipulations regarding the identity of the remains. The one, request of stipulation that we could not agree on was the chain of custody as to the phone but there was an issue with regard to one of the Defense expert's that actually handled the phone. But I believe that that has been resolved and that that guy would not be required for the State to show a complete chain on the phone to produce the records if they needed to produce. As far as the stuff in the car, and this was sort of what we addressed with the Court at the time of the Court's ruling is like we didn't want to have to object every time--
THE COURT: The way I understood, the stop legality, constitutional issue, I have ruled the way I ruled. Subject to that you are not going to continually objecting to the search warrant is bad, you are couching everything from the top down rather than the bottom up.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir. And I didn't want to have to object every time like, this picture was in the car. I don't want to have to reargue this is the fruit of the poisonous tree pursuant to our previous argument.
THE COURT: So you are challenging the validity of the search warrant based on the illegality, but you have lost the issue on the initial stop.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Other than that, subject to that, the search warrants and the State's use of them are subject to all of that.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Continually. Okay. So, I guess the answer to Solicitor Hubbard's question being is, yes, you are challenging it but, no, you are not going to have a hearing on it because you have had the hearing and we lost. Fair enough?
RICK HUBBARD: That is good, Your Honor.
THE COURT: What I remember, a roadside safety checkpoint was the linchpin of everything.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
RICK HUBBARD: And my next one, Your Honor, is probably fairly easy. There were three searches on the house after Mr. Jones absconded from the house. It is very clear he was never coming back, technically he abandoned the premises. But we do have three different occasions where law enforcement went in there, September 7th and then on the 8th and the on the 9th, took photos and did take a few items from the house. Just want to know, are they challenging the search on the house.
BOYD YOUNG: We are not challenging the search on the house. I have a question back to the State in that regard. It is where Mr. Secor and I went into the house, as soon as it was released from law enforcement and took a little over a thousand some odd items from the house that we cataloged and turned over to the State. Said this is all the stuff that we took from the house. Let us know if we took anything that you want, if you need to see anything that we took. And then at a later time Ms. Jones was offered an opportunity to say, like, I don't, here is a bunch of stuff that we don't think is relevant as evidence, if she wants any of it. She came by my office, we gave the State a list of the stuff that she took that was released to her. We are going to be trying to introduce items that we took out of the house. The State is on notice of those if they have any problems with those. All of these items are not only viewable in the pictures that we took but they are also items that are clearly viewable and identifiable that the pictures that the State took.
THE COURT: All right. So the State is not going to challenge your items, you are not challenging their search warrant when they got theirs?
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Fair enough, that sounds like y'all have got an agreement.
RICK HUBBARD: Yes, sir. I just and Mr. Young may have given it to us but a list of the items y'all cataloged, you probably gave it to us a long time ago. Can we just get another copy of that to make sure we got it.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes.
THE COURT: Okay. So the search warrant is not going to be challenged but the admission or the use of any of the items from either side are not going to be challenged either.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
RICK HUBBARD: And, Your Honor, since we are on that, if there is something, if we get into this, that we think that we might need that they have I will reach out to Mr. Young based on his representation.
THE COURT: Okay, good enough.
BOYD YOUNG: I was going to ask to put a copy of the motions into the record as a Court's exhibit, Your Honor.
THE COURT: I think that is appropriate, yes. Can that be a Court's exhibit itself?
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: I like that, that will be 75.
BOYD YOUNG: Those are motions 1 through 102. (Whereupon, Court's Exhibit 75 was marked for identification only.)
THE COURT: Mr. Hubbard, what have you got.
RICK HUBBARD: One final thing, there is a search warrant on the phone. I know they are not consenting to the phone chain itself for where their expert was in the chain but there was, in fact, a search warrant. Are they challenging that search warrant.
THE COURT: I thought the phone was found in the truck, in the vehicle.
BOYD YOUNG: It was.
RICK HUBBARD: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: So they are challenging subject to the initial stop being improper. Other than that it is okay. Correct?
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
RICK HUBBARD: Well, the only reason why it is just not the physical phone itself but context. So we have to do a separate search warrant on that. So I want to know, are they challenging that separate search warrant which I think, you can't just take a phone and go into it as Your Honor knows. So they found it in the vehicle, got another search warrant.
THE COURT: Both search warrants being not challenged but all subject to the original stop?
BOYD YOUNG: Your Honor, I will have to look at the beginning. As far as whether, I don't think that anything in the, in my recollection of the search warrants, whether or not there was like a Franks violation or some material misstatement to the Judge or that they were defective in any way. I don't recall, that would be the only basis for an additional challenge.
THE COURT: But all of those still come out of the original safety checkpoint objections?
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Constitutionality.
RICK HUBBARD: Maybe Mr. Young can look tonight and if there is an issue maybe we can address it tomorrow. Obviously there is a lot of information coming out.
THE COURT: Okay. All of them, I am presuming, all of them will be the same ruling because they all follow the same path. I mean everything is running the same objection, objection, search warrant, chain. They will run very consistently together.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Okay.
BOYD YOUNG: I have an updated copy of Dr. Snyder's CD and I have emailed the final, the final version of the report and the presentation. I want to make sure the State has that information. Finally, Your Honor, during, one of the bench conferences when we were talking about scheduling and how all of this was going to work, the Defense had offered to the State if y'all would tell us sort of general, understand it is not ironclad, order of witnesses we can expect tomorrow, that we would reciprocate. I don't know where they are standing on that.
THE COURT: That is correct, I suggested it to both of you because of the logistical problem of getting people lined up and ready when appropriate.
BOYD YOUNG: Yes, sir.
RICK HUBBARD: Your Honor, we are jostling our schedule around right now. I have got one out-of-state expert who has got go back home Friday because he has got a daughter graduating. So we are trying to see what we can do on the front end, can we get them before then or are we going to have to bump them until Monday. So right now, I will be honest, we are not real sure and probably won't know until we actually start to get into the meat of it, what to tell him. So he may end up coming here twice for us.
THE COURT: So you think you are going to go through Monday, I think that was Mr. Young's question.
BOYD YOUNG: I am saying like, here is who we are calling, here is who we are going to try and get through on Wednesday. Here is who we are going to try and get through on Thursday. And we would do likewise, we are going to get through the next day, here is who we are going to try to get through the next day. I understand it is not out of the realm of possibility that we get to somebody that, as I said, everything went a lot faster and we are going to get to this person. I just ask them for some courtesy given the nature of approximately 300 or so possible witnesses.
RICK HUBBARD: We will try to do that as we are going, Judge. I think overall we may be into Tuesday. But we will try to do that, we have done that before.
THE COURT: Y'all do your best with that. I understand nobody can really commit, until you hear the testimony.