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Extracted Text (OCR)
Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document507 - Filed 11/24/21 Page 27 of 28
purportedly awaited or topics of testimony, besides documents that “may require analysis,” leading
to whatever testimony is “needed.” (Ex. A at 13-14). This is plainly inadequate under the rules,
and the Government cannot litigate the qualifications, reliability, or relevance of unknown
testimony about unidentified documents at this time.
Of course, the Court has the option of permitting the defense to clarify this notice mid-trial
whenever the defense receives and reviews the documents they have in mind. Doing so, however,
would almost certainly lead to mid-trial Daubert briefing, possibly a mid-trial Daubert hearing,
and late-breaking rebuttal expert notice by the Government.
The better course is to require the defense to identify, immediately, the documents they
expect to be the subject of forensic analysis and the precise forensic methodology that these experts
will use to analyze those documents. That may—depending on the details—permit some Daubert
litigation to occur now, because the Government may be able to agree with, or challenge, the notion
that these experts are qualified to use the methodology, that the methodology is reliable, or that
the document is relevant. See, e.g., Jennifer L. Mnookin, “Scripting Expertise: The History of
Handwriting Identification Evidence and the Judicial Construction of Reliability,” 87 Va. L. Rev.
1723, 1726-27 (2001) (describing “major pretrial battles being waged over the admissibility of . . .
expert evidence in handwriting identification”). !3
Here too, the Court should order the defendant to provide additional expert notice of the
methodology these experts intend to use, and the precise documents they expect to examine. Such
'3 Tt would of course defeat the purpose of an order along these lines if the defendant gives expert
notice of numerous document examination methodologies, requiring extensive Daubert litigation
that may stretch into trial and would far exceed the scope any actual testimony that may be
presented at trial.
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DOJ-OGR- 00008068
Extracted Information
Dates
Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00008068.jpg |
| File Size | 713.3 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.3% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,100 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 17:31:01.271637 |