Reply #134: The police report referenced in the OP has indeed been filed with the [View All]

[pnwmom]

court -- sometime last week, as I recall -- along with the accompanying defense motion. AFTER the attorney filed the motion with the attached police report, he gave both to the media. But it didn't really matter, because once it was filed it was available to anyone who came to the court and asked to see it; and members of the media are free to post it online. Most of the documents I have seen have been posted by the local newspapers and TV stations in sidebars to their stories. One of the attorneys also has a website (it turned up in google news one day) www.kirkosborn.com. At that site he has posted the legal filings that he's made on behalf of his client.

Perhaps your confusion is because of the words "discovery file." What has been happening is that the prosecutor had to give the defense copies of the evidence that may be used in the case. The defense attorneys have been going through this material. From time to time they will make a motion that references some document in the discovery file, e.g., a witness statement. At that point the motion is filed along with the referenced document. What was before only a piece of the discovery file is now a part of the publicly available record.

I wasn't implying anything superior to our way of doing things; actually, I explicitly denied that. But, since you mentioned it, with the gang that we have in charge these days, I think we need to retain every bit of transparency that we can. Bush would love to move the courts toward the English way of doing things but I think that, given the dictatorial tendency of some of our politicians, that would be a huge step in the wrong direction.