ORIEGATE: The Case of the Annotated Exhibits.

Posted By Cliff Tuttle | March 10, 2011

Jane Orie is a fierce fighter.

No. 597.

Prosecutors filed a search warrant application on March 8 that indicates their strategy in phase II of this case.

The warrant seeks to obtain a group of defense exhibits presently in custody of the court, containing handwritten notes by Senator Orie. The handwritten comments were exculpatory, in that they indicated that Senator Orie gave instructions such as that employees doing campaign work during regular working hours should do “comp time”.

Several documents containing handwritten comments and/or messages in the margins of typewritten documents were shown by defense counsel while cross-examining prosecution witnesses.  The witnesses recognized the typewritten documents, as well as Jane Orie’s handwriting, but none of them remembered seeing any of the documents containing Senator Orie’s handwritten message.

Later, when Senator Orie testified that she had written and sent these and other documents, they were introduced into evidence.

What the prosecution hopes to do is to prove my scientific testing that the handwritten notes were not written at the time of the original documents, but close to the time of trial.

The search warrant application states that the discrepancy was discovered while the prosecution was putting their copies of defense exhibits in order while the jury was deliberating.

The prosecution intends to submit the documents to the US Secret Service to test the ink, paper and handwriting.

CLT

Welcome

CLIFF TUTTLE has been a Pennsylvania lawyer for over 45 years and (inter alia) is a real estate litigator and legal writer. The posts in this blog are intended to provide general information about legal topics of interest to lawyers and consumers with a Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania focus. However, this information does not constitute legal advice and there is no lawyer-client relationship created when you read this blog. You are encouraged to leave comments but be aware that posted comments can be read by others. If you wish to contact me in privacy, please use the Contact Form located immediately below this message. I will reply promptly and in strict confidence.

Subscribe to our feed