Court Denies Criminal Defendant Access to Image of Police Hard Drive Absent Showing of Falsification or Adulteration of Transcripts of Chats Produced by the State
State v. Rivas, 121 Ohio St. 3d 469, 905 N.E.2d 618 (Ohio 2009)
In this case, the Supreme Court of Ohio was asked to address the question of whether “in a case in which a prosecutor has complied with its duty to provide discovery by delivering a transcript of evidence from the hard drive of a police computer, the accused has the right to obtain a mirror image of the computer hard drive without making a prima facie showing that the information in the transcript is false, incomplete, adulterated, or spoliated.” The court concluded that without making such a showing, a defendant has no right to obtain a copy of the hard drive.