Originally Posted by anrkitec

Maybe someone with a much more precise recollection of the events could correct me but before the trial I seem to remember there being a continuance granted to the prosecution in light of "new video evidence" being offered by the defense.

At the time I thought that was odd as I assumed that the defense would have given over or the police would have confiscated any and all video evidence at the the time of the incident.

That led me to wonder at the time if what had happened was that the cops had in fact erased Phil's video on the night in question, the prosecution made it's case based on the testimony of the cops [and lack of video], and then between then and the eve of the trial Phil was able to send his storage media to a professional data recovery service who were able to recover the original video.

It may be a surprise to some here but merely "deleting" digital storage media doesn't actually erase the data until the media has been overwritten by new data - and sometimes even more than once.

The defense then submitted the recovered video and the prosecution was sent scrambling to redesign their case to try and fit the new video evidence.

Could this also be why the prosecution did not call several of the witnesses they has previously said they would - because in light of the new video there was no way to spin their testimony as anything other than lies?

If this is the case then it seems to this non-lawyer that the cop who lied and any others who helped him to erase the video could be in serious trouble, perhaps even federal trouble, and might face real prison time; tampering with evidence, abuse under color of authority, civil rights violations, false arrest, etc. not to mention any possible civil penalties.

If this is even close to what happened then I am even more surprised that the prosecutor didn't immediately dismiss all charges.