Climber Charles Barrett Arrested for Yosemite Sexual Assaults

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

this seems relevant www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/claims-a-kansas-city-cop-was-raping-women-swirled-for-decades-his-arrest-brought-little-relief/ar-AA129fqf?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=aa1d4d77c1d34f03aee34ee070e06467

from near the end of the article:

"There's much skepticism in the community about whether there will be justice.

Golubski's release from jail on Monday, just four days after his arrest, did little to allay their concerns. 

"I'm very afraid," Williams said through tears Monday. "He always told me that if I told, either he or somebody else could do something to me."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Rachel Schwartz concluded that Golubski doesn't pose much of a risk because of health problems. He needs medical care for diabetes and is recovering from quintuple bypass heart surgery, his attorney said.

Golubski's release came after strong objections from prosecutors who wrote in court documents that he is "more dangerous – not less – today."

"This defendant has shown nothing but utter contempt for the law," they wrote. "He has spent decades lording his power over his victims and the community by demonstrating how unbound by legal limits he feels."

They cited one survivor's rape.

"Why are you doing this?” she asked Golubski, they say. "(He) responded, 'Because I can.'”

Ezra Henderson wrote:

We could make place for those who have been raped to make anonymous accusations, but a lot of this is cultural. We have to change the “boys will be boys” culture, and teach everyone that it is not ok to sexually harass or assault people, and we should see the accuser’s allegations as correct, unless the evidence suggests the opposite. We should also add a minimum sentence for rapists.

That would violate 6th Amendment protections.

Seems like this thread has run its course for now. I'm going to lock it and only resuscitate it if there are newsworthy developments in the criminal case. Everyone else, of course, can always start their own threads to talk about whatever spin off topics they find interesting. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and insights, even the ones I disagree with. 

Looks like CB and his defense attorney have some disagreements about case strategy. Criminal defense counsel asked the court for 60 more days to review discovery provided by the prosecution and to do their own investigation/preparation. Judge asked if CB would agree to this continuance. CB said no and pushed for speedy trial. The judge split the difference and gave defense counsel 30 days extension. Pacer excerpt below. 

Some possibly interesting details on the CB criminal matter. Below screenshots are from two PACER filings. Second one is the  recent status conference report from November confirming that the investigation seized Barrett's digital devices during or after his arrest and has imaged them. Prosecutors asked the defense to provide a 6-Terrabyte drive so they could give them duplicate copies, as is normal in any criminal cases. First image is the most recent status conference report in which it seems the criminal defense attorney is asking for more time to review the multiple TB of evidence while his client is objecting to any continuance or delay and insisting on a "speedy trial."

As a result, trial was scheduled for January 31, 2023 start.

There was another status conference held yesterday but no report yet about what the outcome was. 

By the way, I'm leaving this thread open in case anyone has anything intelligent to say. Hopefully it doesn't turn into another shit show. 

A few terabytes isn’t a lot of you do any type of digital hobby.

Andrew Rice wrote:

I was struck by the fact that the prosecution delivered multiple Terabytes (TB) of digital discovery back to the Defense.
...
I'm curious to know what the evidence is that takes so much digital storage.

It's a typical strategy.
They just dumped full images of a few laptops, tablets and smartphones including system files, page files, temporary files etc.
It would make a job of defense much harder because they would have no clue what particular files will be used during actual trial.

Andrew Rice wrote:

•  1 TB holds approx. 2,000,000 photos (if each photo is 500 KB in size — which is large
• 1 TB holds 40 minutes of raw, uncompressed 4k video footage (if uncompressed from a 4K camera)
• 1TB holds 500 HD feature-length movies
•  1 TB holds 677.96M documents

"each photo is 500 KB in size — which is large" is BS.
Large photo is at least a few Megabytes while a photo in raw format is at least 10 MB.

All remaining numbers are also #fakenews.

Yury wrote:

It's a typical strategy.
They just dumped full images of a few laptops, tablets and smartphones including system files, page files, temporary files etc.
It would make a job of defense much harder because they would have no clue what particular files will be used during actual trial.

Yury wrote:

"each photo is 500 KB in size — which is large" is BS.
Large photo is at least a few Megabytes while a photo in raw format is at least 10 MB.

All remaining numbers are also #fakenews.

You might be right that this early stage it's just full mirror images of all the defendant's devices. I was assuming it was actual discovery, meaning providing the defense with evidence that the government intended to use as trial exhibits.

Re. file sizes. in a Terabyte. Feel free to counter with some other metrics, but calling it "#fakenews" just makes you look like a MAGA goon. 

I agree with Yuri, the Feds are notorious for making huge 'data dumps' on defense counsel, and not all judges are agreeable to pushing the US Attorneys to be particularly specific in what they intend to introduce. We get some of that in State courts, but, at least here in MA, most of the time, not to the extent or volume as in Federal Court. Still as defense counsel I feel duty bound to try to look through everything, just in case there is something helpful for us in there---rarely is.

Alan Rubin wrote:

I agree with Yuri, the Feds are notorious for making huge 'data dumps' on defense counsel, and not all judges are agreeable to pushing the US Attorneys to be particularly specific in what they intend to introduce. We get some of that in State courts, but, at least here in MA, most of the time, not to the extent or volume as in Federal Court. Still as defense counsel I feel duty bound to try to look through everything, just in case there is something helpful for us in there---rarely is.

Thanks Alan. Really appreciate your first-hand experience. Would a defense attorney ever ask their client, pointedly, if there's anything the attorney needs to be worried about in the digital discovery, ie. if there's documents that would link the defendant to a crime, etc? Or do you avoid direct inquiries of that sort?

I'm also guessing that a US Attorney would always rather get a solid guilty plea than run the risk of acquittal at trial. So if they had smoking gun evidence they would be incentivized to show that in a pre-trial conference of some kind, no? In order to motivate the defendant to accept a plea? 

Yes, we do ask those questions, especially if the client's themselves provide us with the devices, asking us to extract what they believe is helpful material. The problem is sometimes that data (even that provided to us by the DAs--who surprisingly often don't preview the material themselves) or devices contain child pornography--possession of which is a serious Federal crime (attorneys possessing it in the course of their representation are NOT exempted) and passing it on in any form, an even more serious one. Of course, we don't always get truthful answers--creating a serious dilemma.

As for your second question, it depends--some US Attorneys want pleas, others, in certain circumstances, like to have 'gotchas'.

Alan Rubin wrote:

Yes, we do ask those questions, especially if the client's themselves provide us with the devices, asking us to extract what they believe is helpful material. The problem is sometimes that data (even that provided to us by the DAs--who surprisingly often don't preview the material themselves) or devices contain child pornography--possession of which is a serious Federal crime (attorneys possessing it in the course of their representation are NOT exempted) and passing it on in any form, an even more serious one. Of course, we don't always get truthful answers--creating a serious dilemma.

As for your second question, it depends--some US Attorneys want pleas, others, in certain circumstances, like to have 'gotchas'.

If you're defense counsel on one of those cases, how do you deal with evidence that contains child pornography without getting yourself into trouble? Do you have to review the devices at special location? Disable the internet capability prior to review?

Good question--even if thread drift--and I will now be at my response limit. We make arrangements to view them at a specific location--usually a room in the prosecutor's office or a police station. It gets even more tricky if we need an expert witness to view the images and the devices--again usually under prosecution supervision--which creates its own set of problems.

Climb On wrote:

If you're defense counsel on one of those cases, how do you deal with evidence that contains child pornography without getting yourself into trouble? Do you have to review the devices at special location? Disable the internet capability prior to review?

Asking for a friend?

So, just to recap and then I'm going to close this thread.

Charlie Barrett's trial currently slated to begin on January 31, 2023. Based on his defense lawyer's statements and wishes that seems likely to push, but maybe not.

I want to thank Alan Rubin and others for clarifying that the very large digital discovery dump is likely just entire images of CB's devices rather than specific trial exhibits. Therefore just as likely to be RAW photos or HD climbing videos as anything else. 

Conference notes from PACER below with updates on possible trial dates, etc. Executive summary is that defense lawyers asked for more time to engage in discovery, retain experts, etc. CB objected to his lawyers' request but judge ruled in favor and set a trial date of May 31, 2023.

On request of some MP community members I'm going to leave this thread open for the time being. Just a PSA, though. It's come to my attention that somebody used identifying information gleaned from this topic to attempt to influence or possibly intimidate people. If you have direct knowledge related to the legal case, rather than post anything here, it might be better to direct that info to the the U.S. Attorney’s Office by calling (888) 653-0009, or emailing nps_isb@nps.gov.

I will limit my own posts about the case to updates based on media and official 3rd party sources. 

Best,

AR

Careful, Barretts’ dad has been monitoring the thread and “reaching out” via DM. Scary.