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Taking note Lawyers argue police destroyed records of interviews
Posted: Tuesday May 09, 2000 08:45 AM
ATLANTA (AP) -- Ray Lewis' lawyers say Atlanta police destroyed notes of interviews with witnesses, depriving the defense team of critical evidence to defend the Baltimore Ravens linebacker against murder charges. Defense attorney Ed Garland planned to ask Superior Court Judge Alice Bonner today to order prosecutors to make police investigators available to him for questioning. The Fulton County district attorney's office would not comment on the motion the defense filed Monday that said there was a "deliberate effort on the part of law enforcement to destroy this information." Defense attorneys last week complained to Bonner that an eight-hour interview with the state's star witness, limo driver Duane Fassett, generated no police notes. Fulton prosecutors said that only an assistant district attorney took notes of that interview -- and those notes would not be available to the defense because they were an attorney's "work product." According to state law, all notes, statements and evidence produced by investigators are to be turned over in the discovery process -- where both sides exchange information before trial. Lewis and co-defendants Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting are charged with murder in the Jan. 31 stabbing deaths of two Decatur men. They are scheduled to go on trial Monday. The defense motion says prosecutors initially turned over no handwritten notes to defense. Later, after defense attorneys complained to Bonner, prosecutors released, "only a few pages, apparently reflecting the notes of two or three investigating officers. "Then in a startling revelation, the state announced that police had destroyed all their rough notes," Lewis' defense team said in the motion. Mike Mears, a defense attorney who has tried dozens of murder trials, said the notes can reveal discrepancies that later appear in typed statements. "They destroy the notes as quickly as they can to prevent such discrepancies," Mears said.
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