What Do You Think?

[troach]

I would like to ask everyone’s opinion regarding a hypothetical situation and see what everyone things should be done.

The situation:

The body of Ms. A was found in her home studio by Ms. A’s housekeeper (Ms. B) when she arrived for work around 6 am. Initial investigation indicated the cause of death was a wound to the head caused by a weighted microphone stand base that was found near the body.

During the investigation the police found that several people had visited Ms. A the day of her death. Including Mr. C a client of Ms. A checking some sound creation and mixing work Ms. A was doing for him. Towards the end of the day One of Ms. A’s neighbors, Ms. D and her 4 year old daughter, arrived shortly before the time the house keeper (Ms. B) left to go home. The last known visitor was Ms. A’s boyfriend Mr. E. The police also discovered that Mr. E and Ms. A had been having problems with their relationship and argued very often. Police also found Mr. E’s finger prints on the object suspected of being the cause of Ms.‘s death.

The police charge Mr. E with murder. Mr. E maintains that he had nothing to do with Ms. A’s death. Saying yes they argued but he also helped her disassemble and put away several pieces of her equipment as she was going to rearrange her studio for some new equipment that she had ordered and would be receiving. Thus he maintains he did not harm Ms. A and that his fingerprints would unquestionably be on most everything.

As time passed, Ms. A’s brother and his wife, Mr. and Ms. F, had been slowly cleaning Ms. A’s house. The cleaning and sorting process was slow as they were uncomfortable being in his sister’s house, but they wanted to be the ones to clean Ms. A’s house and get it ready for eventual sell.

Shortly before the scheduled date of Mr. E’s trial, Mr. and Ms. F found what seemed to be a new piece of recording equipment that had been placed behind several other objects on Ms. A’s desk located in a room outside Ms. A’s studio.

Upon inspection of the device Mr. F. sees that there are several files stored on the device. Most of the files are small (only a few seconds in length). The files were obviously test files of Ms. A experimenting with and learning to use the various functions of the device. However they found one file that was very large with indicators showing that the file contained about 12 hours of recorded data.

After listening to the first few minutes of the file it was obvious that Ms. D’s daughter had apparently accidentally started the device recording and Ms. A had simply pushed the device out of easy reach and sight of the child, not noticing that it had been turned on. Realizing that the device might contain a recording of what happened to His sister and not wanting to take any chances of invalidating the recording as evidence Mr. F stopped the playback and contacted the police detectives who investigated the death of his sister.

The detectives contacted the District Attorney as well as a judge to obtain the proper legal warrants to retrieve the device. The District Attorney also informed the defense attorney as was required.

Even though no one knows what is on the device, or even if anything relevant to the case was recorded, motions are filed saying that since statements had been made indicating that no one (not even Ms. A) knew their conversations were being recording everything recorded on the device should be considered an illegal wire tap and therefore not admissible as evidence.

The question is . . . in your opinion should the recording be used as evidence even though it is an illegal recording of the conversations that took place in the house?

A few questions to help get started thinking about the possibilities and variations that could occur.

What if neither defense nor prosecution wants it used as evidence should it still be evaluated as evidence?

What if only the defense wants to use it?

What if only the prosecution wants to use it?

What if legally the recording cannot be used in court but both defense and prosecution want to use it should it be used? In what way.

Remember no one knows what has been recorded on the device other than the first few minutes, it could prove Mr. E’s guilt, it could prove Mr. E is not guilty, or it may have nothing useful on it at all.

So what do you think should be done with the recording?