Judge blasts Karr's prosecutors, may dismiss charges

[madmusic]

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, September 25, 2006

(09-25) 16:40 PDT SANTA ROSA -- A Sonoma County judge handling the five-year-old child pornography case against suspect John Mark Karr threatened today to dismiss the charges and lashed into prosecutors for not telling her that key evidence -- a computer and hard drive containing sexually explicit images -- had been lost.

Superior Court Judge Cerena Wong said she will consider a motion from Karr's attorney, Robert Amparan, to dismiss the 2001 case on Wednesday, a move that if approved would set Karr free without his having to register as a sex offender in California. Wong also will consider whether to unseal evidence in the case.

snip

Chief Deputy District Attorney Joan Risse said her office has printouts of 1,600 photographs from the computer, including the five that Karr is charged with having, but the original computer images are missing.

Wong castigated Risse for not informing her that the computer was lost even though she has known about it since Aug. 30. She said the sealing orders and other decisions were based on representations Risse made about continuing efforts to obtain more information from the computer.

"I'm very concerned about representations made to the court. The court made decisions based on those representations," Wong said. "I'm really not happy at all with the way this case has been going."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/25/BAG99LCFQT10.DTL

[Kutjara]

1. The bill for this whole clusterfuck should be presented...

...for payment, in full, to the Boulder DA and whatever other halfwits were responsible. Payment should be made from their personal assets. It's an outrage that taxpayers are picking up the tab for such gross incompetence.

I don't care that this latest screw-up is in California, those Boulder tools need to pay.

[daleo]

2. The entire Karr episode has been instructive

It shows how great the gap can be between government allegations, public opinion and actual legally compelling evidence. How many other things, accepted by the public as proven, might rest on equally slim evidence bases?

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Good question

"How many other things, accepted by the public as proven, might rest on equally slim evidence bases?"

Offhand, I can think of at least a couple of big events from about 5 years years ago that might qualify.

[madmusic]

4. How many would have pleaded guilty?

Almost everyone, if not for lifetime registration, that is. But in other cases when they hid the lack of evidence, almost everyone would.