Appellate counsel urges court to consider lost hard drive, alleged prosecutorial misconduct in Holbrook appeal

Summary

At oral argument in Commonwealth v. Holbrook, defense counsel asked the court to consider newly discovered digital evidence and argued that missing or damaged forensic copies and an earlier prosecutor statement deprived the defense; the Commonwealth said the case remains strong and any data loss was not shown to be prejudicial.

Appellate attorney Brian Kelly asked the court to consider newly discovered material that he says bears on claims of prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel in the murder conviction of Richard Holbrook. Kelly told the panel he had "literally just found out about it this week," and that a letter and forensic leads point to facts the motion judge treated as insufficient to show intentional misconduct.

Kelly told the court the trial record shows a failure to secure useful computer forensics: an expert was retained but not fully used, no successor expert was engaged, and copies of a seized hard drive that later produced some emails are now missing or corrupted. Kelly said a predecessor counselexpert, Mr. Verano (the record also contains the variant spelling "Verona"), had recovered emails and provided an affidavit suggesting additional data might have been recoverable…

Appellate counsel urges court to consider lost hard drive, alleged prosecutorial misconduct in Holbrook appeal

Summary

Subscribe to keep reading