6-18-2009 California:
A Sonoma County judge is apparently satisfied with the explanation of why a police decoy’s computer can’t be turned over by prosecutors in the case of an East Bay doctor charged in a televised “sex-predator” sting in Petaluma three years ago.
After a half-day hearing during which he heard sworn testimony from the decoy, Judge Arthur Andy Wick said this week he didn’t need to hear from a defense computer expert who was ready to testify that the decoy’s version of events was implausible.
Dr. Maurice Wolin, 51, an oncologist from Piedmont, was arrested along with 28 others in August 2006 during a three-day sting law enforcement conducted with a group called Perverted Justice and the NBC-TV show “To Catch a Predator.”
Last month, Wick said he wanted to hear from Perverted Justice founder Xavier Von Erck of Portland, Ore., who posed as a 13-year-old girl online and allegedly convinced Wolin to drive to Petaluma for a sexual encounter with her.
Wolin is charged with one felony count of attempted lewd conduct with a child, for which he could be sentenced to four years in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on bail.
Von Erck testified that the hard drive that recorded four days of online sex chats, allegedly with the doctor, crashed in 2007 and was discarded.
The story changes with every sunrise!
Wolin’s attorney, Blair Berk of Los Angeles, argued that Von Erck’s explanation of the dead hard drive was unbelievable.
Prosecutor Brian Staebell said the defense is overstating the value of Von Erck’s computer because the organization’s main proxy server recorded the chats as well.
Then this is what needs to be examined, IF, it truly recorded what happened, and compared with where Von Erck got his copy which was NOT from the main proxy server.
The chats are crucial to prosecutors who believe they show the doctor’s intent to meet a 13-year-old girl for a sexual encounter.
Since the beginning of the case, Wolin’s attorneys have questioned the reliability of the chat logs and their chain of custody between Perverted Justice and police. They said the logs can’t be authenticated.
But Staebell said Von Erck’s computer crash is irrelevant, arguing that prosecutors long ago gave the defense the chat logs from the proxy server.
Those logs, he said, cannot be altered and clearly show Wolin thought he was driving to Petaluma for a sexual rendezvous with a 13-year-old girl he had shared dirty talk with.
Von Erck testified in September 2007 that the chats were saved on his laptop’s hard drive, in addition to the organization’s Texas proxy server. After Wick late last year ordered a copy of the hard drive be turned over to defense attorneys, Von Erck told prosecutors for the first time his computer had died in February 2007.
But, he said, before it crashed, he had copied all sting-related documents to an external hard drive. From there, he said Monday, he copied them again to a portable thumb drive, which he turned over to prosecutors.
“This has gone so far astray from what the real issue is,” Staebell said during Monday’s hearing. “The defense is trying to, in my opinion, use red herrings to distract from the real issues in the case.”
That is, he said, that Wolin intended to have sexual contact with a minor after agreeing to it online.
After hearing Von Erck’s explanation of how the laptop overheated after its fans died, Wick said he didn’t need to hear from a defense computer expert.
Berk said she would seek sanctions against the prosecution for misconduct and destruction of evidence and may ask the judge to dismiss the case. Wick tentatively set a July 30 hearing for those motions.
A trial date was set for Oct. 9, pending other legal issues. ..Source.. by LORI A. CARTER, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
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