On extensive pre-trial motions in a first degree murder prosecution, the court addressed Charter challenges arising from a related arrest investigation, lost evidence, and multiple Garofoli applications to successive warrants and production orders.
The court found numerous serious breaches, including unlawful phone pinging, failures under ss. 10(a) and 10(b), unlawful seizure and reporting failures concerning cell phones, and unacceptable negligence in the loss of both bullpen video and a physically seized phone, leading to exclusion of all post-arrest statements, utterances, the seized phones, and extraction reports.
The court also found unacceptable negligence in the loss of the deceased's Corvette, but held that the proportionate remedy was a jury instruction rather than exclusion of the Van Dam evidence.
The Garofoli challenges largely failed because, after excision and amplification, the issuing justice could still have granted the contested authorizations, save for the phone-content search tied to the unlawfully obtained phones.
