top of page

Michigan Court of Appeals: No Bad Faith for Overwriting Interrogation Video


Last week, the Court of Appeals of Michigan issued a decision, People v. Haywood, No. 342729, 2019 Mich. App. LEXIS 7628 (Mich. Ct. App. Dec. 3, 2019), affirming a lower court's conviction of the Defendant for discharging a firearm in a dwelling and for assault. In its decision the Court noted that while it felt the trial court made a mistake in finding that a videotape of a police interrogation was not intentionally deleted, it did not find that the police department acted in bad faith. The police routinely recorded over hard drives. ". . . while this practice may be unwise, the defendant did not demonstrate that the department acted with knowledge that exculpatory material was on those tapes or that the department destroyed the tapes after the court's order for the production of the original. Defendant argued at trial that the destruction of the original video also destroyed metadata that was necessary for his expert's complete analysis. Again, we note that the expert's affidavit is not in the record. There is no evidence to suggest that the police department was aware that it was destroying metadata when it deleted the original video or the impact that the destruction of metadata would have on a forensic analysis of the video." Id. at *18.

The Court of Appeals also rejected the Defendant's argument, under the Michigan best evidence rule, that a duplicate of the original video recording should be inadmissible because it omitted alleged threats a police officer made to the Defendant's mother and brother on the original video. The officer alleged to have made the threats testified that he had omitted them from an official report and said they were not threats because the mother could be prosecuted if a firearm were found in her home.


 
 

Recent Posts

See All
How does Relativity use AI data?

How is data generated by aiR utilized by Relativity? Relativity has published a white paper addressing its AI security policies assuring...

 
 

Sean O'Shea has more than 20 years of experience in the litigation support field with major law firms in New York and San Francisco.   He is an ACEDS Certified eDiscovery Specialist and a Relativity Certified Administrator.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the owner and do not reflect the views or opinions of the owner’s employer.

If you have a question or comment about this blog, please make a submission using the form to the right. 

Your details were sent successfully!

© 2015 by Sean O'Shea . Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page