Douglas fights videos’ duplication
Duplicating videos that Joseph Duncan allegedly made would jeopardize an ongoing state and federal child pornography investigation, Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said Thursday.
Douglas, in a new legal brief, seeks court permission to provide details in a sealed affidavit of the ongoing but separate investigation. The brief also expands on Douglas’ arguments against copying the videos seized during the investigation.
The brief includes more details on the videos that were seized from equipment in the murder and kidnapping suspect’s vehicle. According to the court documents, there are five videos – a combined length of 60 minutes – which were found on a micro-drive and Duncan’s laptop computer.
“Three of these segments contain vile, horrific, shocking images depicting child pornography,” Douglas wrote. Two of the pornographic videos that Duncan allegedly made are each 7 minutes long. The third is 35 minutes.
Douglas writes that two other videos, one 25 minutes and the other 5 minutes, contain no child pornography. He said the state has no objection to providing those to Duncan’s attorneys and would make arrangements for the defense team to view the others.
“I don’t see anything new or different in this pleading from the last time we were in court,” public defender John Adams said Thursday.
He said Douglas’ use of adjectives like “horrific” has “absolutely no legal relevance whatsoever.”
Adams argued in court Oct. 19 that the public defenders office should have copies of the videos to help prepare a defense for Duncan, and 1st District Judge Fred Gibler agreed. Gibler ordered the prosecutor’s office to turn over copies of the videos to the defense.
Gibler’s order included stringent guidelines to safeguard the videos, requiring that they be encrypted or password-protected and stored in a locked safe, and that access be limited.
Douglas filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider the decision and also asked that the judge suspend his order requiring reproduction of the videos until a hearing can be held on the motion. That hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Douglas is asking the judge to view the videos himself, before Wednesday’s hearing.
The prosecutor says the pornographic videos are not relevant or necessary for the defense of Duncan and that the state does not intend to use the videos as evidence at the trial. Duncan has been charged with three counts of kidnapping and murder for the May bludgeoning deaths of Brenda Groene, her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, and Groene’s 13-year-old son, Slade.
Federal prosecutors have said that, following the state’s trial, Duncan could be charged with producing child pornography as he held Shasta and Dylan Groene at a remote Montana campsite. Duncan may also face federal charges for kidnapping the children, and for 9-year-old Dylan’s murder.
The charges in the state’s case against Duncan don’t include child pornography, Douglas wrote. He said there’s a risk of “unintentional, accidental dissemination for commercial or non-commercial purposes” of the videos.
Earlier this week, Adams, citing a law enforcement source, said some of the videos may already be on the Internet.
Douglas said requiring the state to copy the videos “is unreasonable and oppressive.”
“If child victims of tender years were to later perceive that there is even a remote chance that their images entered the public domain,” Douglas wrote, “the degree of their re-victimization would be inestimable.”