August 23: Claude Paquin: Quebec: From our 'It's about time' department: As CBC Digital Journalist Annabelle Olivier reports, wrongfully convicted of a double murder (in a case tainted by the testimony of a "well-known police informant) - and acquitted 41 years later, he has reached a multimillion dollar settlement with Montreal and the provincial government.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: What do police informants have to do with forensic science? (I'm glad you asked). Investigative  Reporter Pamela Colloff give us  a clue when she writes - at the link below -  "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak." That's my experience as  will as a criminal lawyer and an observer of criminal justice. Given the reality that jurors - thanks to the CSI effect - are becoming more and more insistent on the need for there to be forensic evidence, it is becoming more and more common for police to rely on shady tactics such as use of police snitches, staging lineups, coercing, inducing, or creating false confessions out of thin air, procuring false eyewitness testimony or concealing exculpatory evidence. 

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BACKGROUND: (From this post):  Paquin was found guilty in 1983 of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Ronald Bourgouin and Sylvie Revah, a couple killed in 1978 in the Laurentians. Paquin spent 18 years in prison before being granted full parole in 2001 under strict release conditions, that remained in place for the next 23 years. In 2024, the federal justice minister ordered a retrial, saying that new information in the case showed that a "miscarriage of justice likely occurred."

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The lawsuit alleges police and the prosecution knew, as early as 1983, that the informant's testimony was false and that the only physical evidence allegedly linking Paquin to the crime had been fabricated or altered.  "This case is not merely a miscarriage of justice: it is the story of a stolen life, of a sentence that extended far beyond the prison walls. An existence confiscated," Paquin's lawyers argued in the lawsuit.  His lawyers also pointed to Paquin's "grim record for the longest unjustified deprivation of liberty ever documented in Quebec." 

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STORY: "Man acquitted of double murder after 40 years reaches settlement with Montreal, Quebec," by Journalist Annabelle Olivier, published by CBC News, on 000.  (Annabelle Olivier is a digital journalist at CBC Montreal. She previously worked at Global News as an online producer.)

SUB-HEADING: "Claude Paquin spent more than 4 decades fighting to prove his innocence."

 PHOTO CAPTION: "Claude Paquin was 81 years old when he was acquitted of a double murder he had long insisted he never committed. 

Social Sharing

GIST: "Claude Paquin, a Quebec man who was wrongfully convicted of a double murder and acquitted 41 years later, has reached a mulitimillion-dollar settlement with Montreal and the provincial government.

The three parties announced the settlement in a joint statement on Friday. 

"The City of Montreal and the Attorney General of Quebec hope that this agreement — which allows all parties to avoid a long trial this fall — will help Mr. Paquin turn the page on this difficult chapter of his life," the statement reads.

Paquin was found guilty in 1983 of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Ronald Bourgouin and Sylvie Revah, a couple killed in 1978 in the Laurentians.

Paquin spent 18 years in prison before being granted full parole in 2001 under strict release conditions, that remained in place for the next 23 years.

In 2024, the federal justice minister ordered a retrial, saying that new information in the case showed that a "miscarriage of justice likely occurred."

Paquin, now 83, was acquitted on Nov. 6, 2024,

At the time, Paquin said his acquittal would not have been possible without the work of his lawyers who are part of Projet Innocence Québec. 

The case against Paquin relied heavily on the testimony of Bernard Provençal, a well-known police informant. But over the years, Projet Innocence Québec found evidence that raised questions about his credibility. 

'The story of a stolen life'

Paquin, represented by lawyers at Woods LLP, filed a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court in May 2025 against the City of Montreal and the Attorney General of Quebec for what the suit says were failings of their agents, including Montreal police, the Sûreté du Québec, and the Quebec Crown prosecutor's office.

The lawsuit alleges police and the prosecution knew, as early as 1983, that the informant's testimony was false and that the only physical evidence allegedly linking Paquin to the crime had been fabricated or altered. 

"This case is not merely a miscarriage of justice: it is the story of a stolen life, of a sentence that extended far beyond the prison walls. An existence confiscated," Paquin's lawyers argued in the lawsuit. 

His lawyers also pointed to Paquin's "grim record for the longest unjustified deprivation of liberty ever documented in Quebec." 

The lawsuit indicates Paquin had been seeking just over $89 million in damages. However, none of the parties involved would confirm the amount, citing a confidentiality clause in the agreement.

Because the lawsuit was settled, its claims were not tested in court, and the parties said they would not make further comment."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/claude-paquin-wrongful-conviction-settlement-montreal-quebec-9.7307722

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Katie Smith: Georgia: Shaken Baby Syndrome/junk science: Katie Smith, whose murder conviction was based on what’s increasingly seen as junk science, will be fighting for freedom tomorrow (Monday August 24) offering new evidence at a hearing in which her lawyers will be seeking a new trial, Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg reports in 'The Appeal' in a story headed, "Shaken baby syndrome has been largely debunked, Courts are catching up, noting that: “Tucker’s death was a tragedy, not a crime,” Katie’s lawyers wrote in their motion. “Tucker was sick from birth, and was living with an undiagnosed and untreated deadly brain condition.” Truthout reviewed Tucker’s medical records, which total about 278 pages. They reveal that Katie took him to the pediatrician more than 25 times, in addition to visits to specialists and the emergency room."..."Notes from the hospital state that he “was bedridden” because he “could not rise from the bed without assistance, could not ambulate, and could not sit in a chair or wheelchair without support restraints.” Yet, he was discharged the next day. Katie was instructed to make a follow-up appointment with Tucker’s pediatrician. Less than two weeks later, Katie took Tucker to see a pediatric neurologist. His report is riddled with errors. He wrote that Tucker was born full-term (he was premature) and that he had never been hospitalized, although he had been admitted to the neurologist’s own institution just 11 days earlier. He diagnosed Tucker with breath-holding episodes and told Katie that Tucker would grow out of them. “I do not think these are seizures or epilepsy,” he wrote in his report."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Today, the diagnostic approach is different,” Katie’s attorney, Loudon-Brown, told Truthout. “You might keep the idea of non-accidental trauma in your head, but you would have to go further. You would have to look at what’s going on with Tucker."

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PASSAGE  ONE OF THE DAY:  "Katie’s attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights say their investigation has revealed that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred.  Experts retained by her legal team — a neurologist and a forensic pathologist — have concluded that Tucker died of undiagnosed epilepsy, which was caused by an undetected arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his brain. AVM is a life-threatening condition that typically develops in utero, in which a person has abnormally tangled blood vessels that disrupt blood flow, deprive tissue of oxygen, and face risk of rupture. Forty-four people have been exonerated in SBS/AHT cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations."

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PASSAGE  TWO OF THE DAY: "At Katie’s trial, misogyny and junk science collided. Katie was a single parent working as a hospice nurse. Her husband, and Tucker’s father, died by suicide when Tucker was just two months old. After his death, Katie and her children moved in with Kitchens, a friend from high school. At trial, prosecutors portrayed Katie as an uncaring mother who neglected Tucker’s medical needs and prioritized her friendship with Kitchens over her children. Katie did not take the stand. Vilifying mothers is a common prosecutorial tactic in cases where women are accused of crimes that likely never occurred, according to Valena Beety, author of Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity.  “The woman is wrongly convicted based on that confluence of [false] forensic evidence and gender bias,” Beety recently told The Appeal."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "The centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was the testimony of two medical experts who told the jury that Tucker had been shaken. Mary Lynn Sheram, the hospital physician who first diagnosed Tucker with SBS/AHT, testified that Tucker’s symptoms are “shown in the literature to be 100% as non-accidental trauma.” The bleeding around his eyes “makes it a hallmark for abusive head injury.” Nearly identical statements have been made in numerous SBS/AHT cases that have resulted in exonerations."

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PASSAGE  FOUR OF THE DAY: "The second medical expert for the prosecution in Katie’s case was Lora Darrisaw, the director of pediatric forensic pathology at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  “[W]e have no plausible accidental event that would account for the findings that I had,” she told the jury."

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PASSAGE FIVE OF THE DAY: "The medical community’s understanding of SBS/AHT has changed significantly in the years since Tucker’s death. Since 2014, 27 people convicted in SBS/AHT cases have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.  Last year, in a first-of-its-kind decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court banned testimony on SBS from the state’s courtrooms. In July, in another Georgia case, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kimberly A. Gallant granted Danyel Smith’s request for a new trial, noting SBS/AHT is no longer treated as a “presumptive diagnosis,” and that “current medical and scientific standards” require providers to consider “alternative, non-abusive causes before concluding abuse.” (Danyel is also represented by the Southern Center for Human Rights. He and Katie are not related.)"

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STORY: "Shaken Baby Syndrome Has Been Largely Debunked. Courts Are Still Catching Up," by Reporter Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, published by 'The Appeal' on August 22, 2026. Co-published with Truthout. ("Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a Senior Reporter for The Appeal. Based in New Jersey, she writes on prison and jail conditions, wrongful convictions, and the criminalization of disabilities. Elizabeth has also written for The Nation, New York Focus, and TruthOut. Partnering with CoLAB Arts, she has written two interview-based plays, which have been performed in the Northeast—“Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison” and “Banished: A Family on the Sex Offender Registry.” She worked for eight years at the Innocence Project as a case analyst where her work was instrumental in several exonerations. She is the recipient, with journalist Juan Moreno Haines, of the 2020 California Journalism Awards Print Contest. They were awarded first place for At San Quentin, Overcrowding Laid The Groundwork For An Explosive COVID-19 Outbreak, in the category: Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic – Fallout, weeklies, circulation 25,0001 and over.")

SUB-HEADING: "Katie Smith, whose murder conviction was based on what’s increasingly seen as junk science, is fighting for her freedom."

GIST" "By the time Mason Tucker Smith was 2 years old, his mother, Mary Katherine Smith, had taken him to the doctor dozens of times.

Tucker had frequent ear infections, high fevers, and episodes of vomiting. On at least six occasions, he had seizures, but the doctors repeatedly reassured his mother, who goes by Katie, that these were benign “breath-holding spells” that would resolve on their own.

On the day of his collapse, July 30, 2014, Tucker had another seizure while Katie’s housemate, Jeremy Kitchens, was watching him in their bedroom and Katie was making dinner, according to her statement to the police.

As she approached the bedroom door, she heard a “thud.” Katie entered the room and Kitchens told her that Tucker was having another “episode.” Katie told police that she found Tucker unconscious on the ground. Believing that this was another breath-holding episode, she picked him up and put him on the bed. She left him in Kitchens’s care while she drove her daughter to meet a friend. While she was gone, Tucker vomited.

She returned to the house about 20 minutes later and checked Tucker’s oxygen level. When it began to drop, she called 911 and attempted to resuscitate him.

At the hospital, a physician concluded Tucker had been shaken. He was declared dead on August 2 and Katie was charged with his murder.

Two years later, Katie went to trial in Richmond County, Georgia, and was found guilty. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS), also known as abusive head trauma (AHT), has been largely debunked, with one New Jersey judge calling it “akin to ‘junk science.’” While some courts have started to take a more critical look at SBS/AHT cases, prosecutions have continuedand many people are still fighting their convictions.

The so-called triad of symptoms associated with SBS/AHT — bleeding around the eyes, bleeding between the skull and brain, and brain swelling — can be caused by strokes, short-distance falls, seizures, and disease, among other things.

Katie’s attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights say their investigation has revealed that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred.

Experts retained by her legal team — a neurologist and a forensic pathologist — have concluded that Tucker died of undiagnosed epilepsy, which was caused by an undetected arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his brain. AVM is a life-threatening condition that typically develops in utero, in which a person has abnormally tangled blood vessels that disrupt blood flow, deprive tissue of oxygen, and face risk of rupture.

Forty-four people have been exonerated in SBS/AHT cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Katie’s attorneys have filed a motion for a new trial and, on August 24, they will present their new evidence before the Superior Court of Richmond County.. The Augusta District Attorney’s Office is opposing Katie’s petition. The office did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.

“Tucker’s death was a tragedy, not a crime,” Katie’s lawyers wrote in their motion. “Tucker was sick from birth, and was living with an undiagnosed and untreated deadly brain condition.”
Tucker’s Medical Records

Truthout reviewed Tucker’s medical records, which total about 278 pages. They reveal that Katie took him to the pediatrician more than 25 times, in addition to visits to specialists and the emergency room.

The physicians reassured Katie that Tucker was a healthy child. They told her that when he became upset he held his breath until he passed out, but that this was nothing to be concerned about.

Tucker’s first witnessed seizure occurred at daycare when he was five months old. Katie picked him up from daycare and took him to the pediatrician.

“Patient was reported to have had eyes roll back and lose consciousness while eating baby food in a highchair (sort of slumped),” the doctor wrote.

The pediatrician sent him to the hospital for an overnight observation. During the observation, Tucker “ate and slept well,” according to the medical records. Katie told the doctor that Tucker’s father, who had died shortly after Tucker’s death, and nephew each had experienced one seizure. The report does not recommend any further evaluation.

After his second seizure, which also occurred at daycare, his pediatrician referred him for an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. The EEG report states that it was normal.

In her affidavit to the court, defense expert Heather Ravvin McKee, a neurologist who specializes in epilepsy, says research shows that “a single routine EEG only has an approximately 29-55 percent chance” of showing abnormal brain waves.

Despite the results of the EEG, Tucker should have been treated for epilepsy after the second seizure at the latest, she wrote.

Tucker had another seizure a few months later in March of 2013. Then, on July 20, 2013, when Tucker was 15 months old, he experienced a seizure that lasted between 15 and 20 minutes. He was still seizing when he and Katie arrived at the hospital, according to his medical records.

Notes from the hospital state that he “was bedridden” because he “could not rise from the bed without assistance, could not ambulate, and could not sit in a chair or wheelchair without support restraints.” Yet, he was discharged the next day. Katie was instructed to make a follow-up appointment with Tucker’s pediatrician.

Less than two weeks later, Katie took Tucker to see a pediatric neurologist. His report is riddled with errors. He wrote that Tucker was born full-term (he was premature) and that he had never been hospitalized, although he had been admitted to the neurologist’s own institution just 11 days earlier.

He diagnosed Tucker with breath-holding episodes and told Katie that Tucker would grow out of them. “I do not think these are seizures or epilepsy,” he wrote in his report.

On July 23, 2014, a week before Tucker’s final collapse, Katie and Tucker returned to the pediatrician. Tucker had been vomiting, was nauseous, and was experiencing headaches. The doctor told Katie to keep him hydrated. However, this may have been a sign that something more serious was at play. Vomiting can occur as part of a seizure, following a seizure, or can be a sign of increased pressure in the brain, according to neurologist McKee, the defense expert.
The Prosecution’s Case

At Katie’s trial, misogyny and junk science collided. Katie was a single parent working as a hospice nurse. Her husband, and Tucker’s father, died by suicide when Tucker was just two months old. After his death, Katie and her children moved in with Kitchens, a friend from high school.

At trial, prosecutors portrayed Katie as an uncaring mother who neglected Tucker’s medical needs and prioritized her friendship with Kitchens over her children. Katie did not take the stand.

Vilifying mothers is a common prosecutorial tactic in cases where women are accused of crimes that likely never occurred, according to Valena Beety, author of Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity.

“The woman is wrongly convicted based on that confluence of [false] forensic evidence and gender bias,” Beety recently told The Appeal.

Kitchens testified for the prosecution and relayed essentially the same account that Katie had provided to the police. The prosecutor asked Kitchens if he had not killed Tucker, who did? Kitchens replied, “I guess Katie did … She was the only other one there.” On cross-examination, the defense accused Kitchens of killing Tucker.

Emergency personnel testified that Katie was “unnaturally calm” when they arrived.

“We’ve had kids locked in cars on cool days and the parents were much more emotional about the situation than that day,” a sergeant with the fire department told the jury.

Prosecutors and police often make assumptions about how a person should respond to a crisis. Among wrongful convictions, there are numerous examples of law enforcement presuming that too much or too little emotion was indicative of an innocent person’s guilt.

Katie’s attorney, Mark Loudon-Brown, noted in a phone interview with Truthout that Katie was a nurse who is trained to remain calm in crises.

The centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was the testimony of two medical experts who told the jury that Tucker had been shaken.

Mary Lynn Sheram, the hospital physician who first diagnosed Tucker with SBS/AHT, testified that Tucker’s symptoms are “shown in the literature to be 100% as non-accidental trauma.” The bleeding around his eyes “makes it a hallmark for abusive head injury.”

Nearly identical statements have been made in numerous SBS/AHT cases that have resulted in exonerations.

Timothy Gonzalez was convicted in an SBS case in 2016, the same year as Katie’s conviction, and was exonerated earlier this year. At his trial, a child abuse pediatrician testified that there was no “accidental explanation” and no “medical explanation” for his daughter’s injuries. In 2022, the court tossed out his conviction. At his retrial earlier this year, his attorneys presented evidence that Gonzalez’s daughter had suffered from a respiratory infection that led to encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, which then developed into sepsis. On March 11, the jury acquitted Gonzalez of all charges.

The second medical expert for the prosecution in Katie’s case was Lora Darrisaw, the director of pediatric forensic pathology at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“[W]e have no plausible accidental event that would account for the findings that I had,” she told the jury.

Several years before Katie’s trial, Darrisaw was the star witness in the murder trial of two Georgia parents, Ashley and Albert Debelbot, who were accused of killing their three-day-old newborn. She ruled the death a homicide by blunt force trauma. In 2021, the parents were exonerated after their attorneys uncovered evidence that their baby had been born with abnormalities in the brain which led to her death. 

Openings for Exoneration

The medical community’s understanding of SBS/AHT has changed significantly in the years since Tucker’s death. Since 2014, 27 people convicted in SBS/AHT cases have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Last year, in a first-of-its-kind decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court banned testimony on SBS from the state’s courtrooms. In July, in another Georgia case, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kimberly A. Gallant granted Danyel Smith’s request for a new trial, noting SBS/AHT is no longer treated as a “presumptive diagnosis,” and that “current medical and scientific standards” require providers to consider “alternative, non-abusive causes before concluding abuse.” (Danyel is also represented by the Southern Center for Human Rights. He and Katie are not related.)

“Today, the diagnostic approach is different,” Katie’s attorney, Loudon-Brown, told Truthout. “You might keep the idea of non-accidental trauma in your head, but you would have to go further. You would have to look at what’s going on with Tucker.”"

The entire story can be read at:

https://share.google/Sr10VTwJrdhTtBVny

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

August 22: Technology Gone Wrong: Part 2: From our 'Read this, and do something about it" department: ''First came the Flock cameras. Now local cops want autonomous drones.' (I got goosebumps reading it. HL.) It's by Reporter Mike Ludwig; Published in collaboration by The Appeal and Truthout... The automated drone push comes as resistance to mass surveillance by license plate-reading cameras goes viral. Residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on the data gathered by high-tech drones and cameras — or an end to mass surveillance altogether. Scandals over digital stalking by police and other abuses are erupting as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways. In response, people are taking direct action, sabotaging automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are capable of building complex profiles of individual vehicles."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Unlike most consumer drones, which are controlled by an operator looking up from the ground, autonomous surveillance drones used for DFR programs are operated remotely, allowing police to send drones much longer distances and stream live video footage back to headquarters. Cops in many cities have launched camera-carrying drones for years, but autonomous drones guided by AI are capable of flying “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator (also known as BVLOS drones) and can be managed from a central launch pad, freeing up police time and capacity."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Lipton said many questions remain about how police are actually using drones as “first responders,” and advocacy around restrictions and transparency is critical. Drones are not as immediately visible to the public as traffic cameras. But as anger continues rise over the automated license plate readers sold to police by Flock and Axon, Lipton expects a similar backlash to automated drones once more people learn about the technology. “The adoption of these tools has outpaced the public’s awareness that they exist,” Lipton said. “License plate readers have been around for a very long time at this point, but we are seeing a moment where everybody — even people who are not tech-savvy — understand what it means that these systems are accessible in real time and interconnected."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "New Orleans was among the cities that received the FAA waiver for an automated drone-as-first-responder program. Police plan to expand their existing drone program to launch drones in response to 911 calls from the historic French Quarter later this year. But residents were outraged after activists discovered that the city’s police department had changed internal rules to allow police drones to carry “weapons” with prior approval from the police superintendent, according to Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance.Police claimed the change was only a proposal added to a draft policy, but as Verite News pointed out, the file name for the “draft” document suggests the policy was meant to go into effect on June 21.  “Nobody knew; city council didn’t know, we had to announce it, and we mobilized people to start calling and start demanding that this be rescinded,” Romero told Truthout in an interview.

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STORY: "First Came the Flock Cameras. Now Local Cops Want Autonomous Drones," by Reporter Mike Ludwig, published by The Appeal (co-published with Truthout) on August 12, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "Hundreds of local police departments have received waivers to fly surveillance drones that navigate with AI."

GIST: "Police in cities across the U.S. are rolling out a pro-drone PR blitz as hundreds of local police departments prepare to deploy autonomous, AI-driven surveillance drones. The drones are capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life from the sky without being noticed.

As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called “drone-as-first-responder” (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.

The automated drone push comes as resistance to mass surveillance by license plate-reading cameras goes viral. Residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on the data gathered by high-tech drones and cameras — or an end to mass surveillance altogether.

Scandals over digital stalking by police and other abuses are erupting as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways. In response, people are taking direct action, sabotaging automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are capable of building complex profiles of individual vehicles.

Flock Safety, a top surveillance tech firm, is the company most associated with ALPRs and is itself often at the center of controversy. But Flock also has a number of competitors, including Axon and Motorola Solutions. And business across the surveillance tech economy is booming.

In many cities, local cops have extra funding for surveillance from wealthy private donors, police foundations, and federal grants; surveillance companies also often offer police free trials and help with applying for grants and waivers. Those surveillance firms have expanded from offering singular technologies such as ALPRs or body-worn cameras to become one-stop shops for police seeking the latest surveillance setup — including advanced drones.

Unlike most consumer drones, which are controlled by an operator looking up from the ground, autonomous surveillance drones used for DFR programs are operated remotely, allowing police to send drones much longer distances and stream live video footage back to headquarters. Cops in many cities have launched camera-carrying drones for years, but autonomous drones guided by AI are capable of flying “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator (also known as BVLOS drones) and can be managed from a central launch pad, freeing up police time and capacity.

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot,” said Beryl Lipton, the senior investigative researcher at EFF, in an interview. “They don’t have a pilot, but there is often a human person who is there to manage the feed.”

Instead of attending a street parade and launching a drone overhead, for example, police can fly multiple drones with AI-driven navigation from a desk, as EFF writes:

FAA rules for police drones also required a human operator to manually fly the device to a scene, but DFR technology has become a more common and more automated police technology. DFR programs increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to automate drone flights from launchpads placed around the city, often atop municipal buildings, and make it possible for one drone operator to “fly” multiple devices at once.

Flying a BVLOS drone requires an FAA waiver. The agency streamlinedthe waiver process in April 2025 and approved more waivers for BVLOS drones between then and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined, EFF reports.

Lipton said most law enforcement applicants are already deploying automated drones or are strongly considering a “drone-as-first-responder” program. Once police begin a relationship with a company such as Flock Safety or Axon, Lipton said, taxpayers can expect a push for purchases of additional gadgets, upgrades, and storage for video.

It’s also not surprising that these programs now seem ubiquitous. “There is a lot of this kind of peer pressure in law enforcement, you can really see it with Flock,” Lipton said. “One police department gets a new tool or signs off on Flock cameras, and then you see neighboring cities are now signing up for Flock to keep up with the latest new thing.”

Flock Safety boasts that its automated “first responder” drones carry ALPR cameras that can read license plates from above up to 2,000 feet away, allowing police to connect surveillance footage of individual vehicles to data captured on the street. Lipton said companies such as Flock and Axon bundle services like gadgets and processing software to help police compile data from multiple streams into easily searchable databases, including footage from body-warn cameras, ALPRs, automated gunshot detectors, and drones flying overhead.

While a corporate partnership between Flock Safety and Axon fell apart in early 2025, some of the most prominent companies selling drones to police departments, including Skydio, integrate their products directly with the software and data analysis tools sold by leading manufacturers of ALPRs. “People don’t realize that video analytics has really developed as much as it has in the past few years, no matter whether coming from a police body-worn camera, drones or ALPR,” Lipton said. “All of these can easily be analyzed and made searchable, and that is a really integral part of what Axon and Flock are doing.”

Amid widespread backlash to ALPRs, police across the nation are going into PR mode, releasing footage of drones in action along with statements casting the technology as a “first responder” that can arrive on the scene before police to establish “situational awareness,”help with search-and-rescue, and track down suspects and stolen property.

“It seemed much more palatable for a drone to be framed as a ‘first responder’ going to a specific crime rather than a tool for surveillance that has a very abstract crime-fighting purpose,” Lipton said. “But in practice it is plain old surveillance.”

Audits of drone flight logs — from piloted or autonomous drones — tell a more complicated story. In places police are required to log flights, officers often record only vague justifications for launching drones without a warrant, often for what appear to be routine dispatches and training flights, the ACLU has noted. Even on mundane missions, such drones equipped with powerful zoom lenses or infrared sensors can capture significant data that can later be analyzed with AI-powered data processing and facial recognition technology.

On July 13, Wired published an investigation into hours of drone footage from the San Franciso Police Department, providing an unfiltered look at automated drones in action. The footage was accidentally released on the open internet via the website for Skydio, the company providing the drones and software behind them. Discovered by security researchers Sam Curry and Maik Robert, the leaked footage itself raised serious privacy concerns.

“In the case of San Franscisco, they are doing a lot of locking onto license plates and, particularly, people, and the drone is able to navigate itself,” Lipton said.

The innocuous scenes captured by drones — police talking to a unhoused person, an arrest at a gas station by undercover officers, two men parking a car before joining a basketball game — also raised questions about the nature and breadth of the surveillance.

In one video, a response to an alleged “prowler” incident, the drone hovers over a young person wearing headphones and apparently having a private moment on the roof of a building. The drones have powerful zoom lenses, and footage captured of living rooms in the interior of apartments and people on private rooftops raise serious constitutional questions about the level of intrusion involved, according to Jay Stanley, a privacy analyst at the ACLU.

“It’s pretty clear that a police drone hovering, say, outside a 2nd story window in a suburban backyard would violate ‘reasonable expectations of privacy’ and thus the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, but it’s less clear what the courts would find to be a reasonable expectation of privacy in a city, where people are already susceptible to Rear Window-type observation,” Stanley wrote in a blog post on July 17.

In some cities, police launched drone-as-first-responder programs with automated BVLOS drones with little or no oversight. The city council in Nashville, Tennessee, is considering placing restrictions on automated drones after learning that police had quietly launched a trial program without a vote or hearing by the city council. After public outcry, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced on August 6 that it would end its trial drone program.

New Orleans was among the cities that received the FAA waiver for an automated drone-as-first-responder program. Police plan to expand their existing drone program to launch drones in response to 911 calls from the historic French Quarter later this year. But residents were outraged after activists discovered that the city’s police department had changed internal rules to allow police drones to carry “weapons” with prior approval from the police superintendent, according to Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance.Police claimed the change was only a proposal added to a draft policy, but as Verite News pointed out, the file name for the “draft” document suggests the policy was meant to go into effect on June 21.

“Nobody knew; city council didn’t know, we had to announce it, and we mobilized people to start calling and start demanding that this be rescinded,” Romero told Truthout in an interview.

Police ditched the policy on drones carrying weapons after public outcry. On August 6, the New Orleans City Council voted to require police to publicly publish regular drone flight logs and reports on usage and reasons for deployment. While the new ordinance addresses transparency, it does not place enforceable restrictions on drone use. Romero echoed residents who submitted public comments arguing the ordinance does not go far enough.

“We need to do an investigation of the policy violations that happened last year, and the change in policy that weaponized the drones before we can move toward an expansion,” Romero said, adding that there must be penalties for police who deploy drones for unapproved uses.

The city has become a testing ground for surveillance tech, including ALPRs and cameras equipped with facial recognition. Wealthy private interests have funded an expansion of policing in the French Quarter, and the nonprofit Project NOLA secretly supplied police with data from a network of facial recognition cameras in violation of local law.

Officials said the use of facial recognition was paused after a Washington Post investigation exposed the program in May 2025, but the ACLU reported in April 2026 that abuses continue. The ongoing controversy has left residents anxious about surveillance in a city where drones are already a common sight during parades and street festivals.

“We already have people coming to us saying, ‘I saw drone outside my window, we don’t know what to do, how can we even confirm that it was a police drone?’” Romero said. “But we don’t know who was manning the drone, and for what purpose.”

According to Skydio flight logs for 2025 obtained by Eye on Surveillance and reviewed by Truthout, piloted drones were overwhelmingly dispatched to respond to calls about minor incidents, including a subject who was “involved in a disturbance with the hot dog guy then fled the scene.”

Drones were twice dispatched in response to a “Black female” causing a “disturbance” on or near Bourbon Street, famously one of the rowdiest bar crawls in the world. While many entries for “Type of Incident” in the flight logs are left blank, in multiple cases, drones responded to calls about unhoused people and people with mental illness.

“This is really why they want the [drones-as-first-responder] drones in the French Quarter,” Romero said. “These business owners don’t want to see people that are houseless, and they want to harass people they think are suspicious.”

Romero said building a surveillance state is clearly not the solution to homelessness or the budget crisis facing city leaders, who may be tempted by lucrative federal grants that require cities to build out surveillance infrastructure. Romero pointed to the Trump administration’s Model Cities Initiative, which offers $300 million to cities that invest in “proactive policing” and surveillance tech.

“We have to take into consideration that the federal and the state governments are trying to use all the surveillance technologies out there. And so if cities are building the surveillance infrastructure, the risks that our data will end up in the hands of the federal government or state government in our case are really high,” Romero said.

Lipton said many questions remain about how police are actually using drones as “first responders,” and advocacy around restrictions and transparency is critical. Drones are not as immediately visible to the public as traffic cameras. But as anger continues rise over the automated license plate readers sold to police by Flock and Axon, Lipton expects a similar backlash to automated drones once more people learn about the technology.

“The adoption of these tools has outpaced the public’s awareness that they exist,” Lipton said. “License plate readers have been around for a very long time at this point, but we are seeing a moment where everybody — even people who are not tech-savvy — understand what it means that these systems are accessible in real time and interconnected.""

The entire story can be read at: 

https://theappeal.org/first-came-the-flock-cameras-now-local-cops-want-autonomous-drones/

August 21: Technology Gone Wrong: Part 1: Richmond, Virginia: Flock, the company that operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day. has announced changes amid backlash over its license plate reader network - but some critics say its pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance, and that the changes don't go far enough, The Associated Press (Reporters Sarah Rankin and Claudia Lauer, report, noting that: "Dozens of cities and agencies have nixed their relationships with Flock amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking, after a flurry of examples surfaced of law enforcement officers misusing the technology for personal searches."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The Washington Post reported earlier this month finding nearly 50 instances of police officers charged or accused of using the cameras for unauthorized purposes, many for tracking current or former romantic partners or family members. Just this week, six employees — including four officers — of the Savannah Police Department in Georgia were fired after they were accused of searching for friends and family using the tool and allowing an officer from an outside agency to use the city’s cameras. The Savannah department said it was made aware of the misuse through Flock’s voluntary audit function."

-----------------------------------

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Critics of the company reacted skeptically to the changes, which they said appeared designed to address the growing bipartisan anger about the cameras but could still leave room for police to abuse the system.  The American Civil Liberties Union said in a blog post that the shortened evidence retention window could be “a step in the right direction,” but it characterized the other changes as “retreads” of inadequate safety measures."

-----------------------------------

QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "Robert Frommer, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that’s led closely watched litigation over the technology, called the changes “window dressing” from a company in “panic mode.” “This is window dressing that doesn’t address the fundamental problem, which is that police officers are the ones deciding who and when to search, and that should be done by judges with real warrants,” he said."

-----------------------------------

QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY:  "Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a professor at the George Washington University Law School whose scholarship has focused on policing, big data surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, said Thursday’s shifts were “better than the opposite” but called for further scrutiny of the technology in the form of “sustained democratic engagement with the rules and judicial checks on access at a minimum.” Ferguson said he’s been surprised to see the “growing community backlash” against Flock specifically, given that the technology isn’t new and other companies sell it as well. But Flock and the movement against it have “captured people’s sense that maybe they don’t want to be surveilled all the time,” he said."

-----------------------------------

STORY; 'Flock announces changes amid backlash over its license plate reader network, by Associated Press Reporters Sarah Rankin and Claudia Lauer, published on August 13, 2026.  (Sarah Rankin is a Virginia-based AP reporter covering US state governments and politics.  Claudia Lauer is National law enforcement reporter in Philadelphia for The Associated Press.)

GIST: "Flock Safety, the surveillance technology company increasingly under scrutiny from lawmakers from both parties, civil liberties advocates and citizens across the U.S., announced Thursday that it is making changes to its platform intended to quell privacy concerns and address documented abuses of its system by some members of law enforcement.

The company operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day.

Thousands of law enforcement agencies in 49 states can search and share Flock’s data across jurisdictions to aid their investigations.

Police have credited the technology as an important crime-fighting innovation that has helped locate missing people and track suspects in violent crimes.

But some critics say its pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance.

Dozens of cities and agencies have nixed their relationships with Flock amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking, after a flurry of examples surfaced of law enforcement officers misusing the technology for personal searches.

CEO says changes will drive accountability

In an interview, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said many of the product changes will make what were once optional guardrails mandatory for its users to implement by Jan. 1.

Among them: All law enforcement customers will have to implement an audit tool that’s intended to flag abnormal search behavior.

When the system detects abnormal behavior, the user would be locked out pending an internal review, the company said in a description of the changes provided ahead of Thursday’s announcement.

Flock, which says its customers own the data that the cameras record, is also shortening the standard data retention window from 30 days to seven.

It said it will allow data to be preserved for longer when it is evidence tied to a case number.

Law enforcement users will now also be required to enter a code from their records management system tying each search to a specific case before it is run, something Langley said civil liberties advocates have long been calling for. Overrides for emergencies would be automatically flagged for review, the company said.

Customers will also be allowed to decide which offense types — such as homicide or arson — outside agencies can search their data for, which would allow a customer to block outside searches related to immigration enforcement, the company said.

Langley said that change will give individual cities and departments control to use the system in a manner “consistent with community values.”
Critics say updates still leave room for abuses, supporters urge balance

Critics of the company reacted skeptically to the changes, which they said appeared designed to address the growing bipartisan anger about the cameras but could still leave room for police to abuse the system.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a blog post that the shortened evidence retention window could be “a step in the right direction,” but it characterized the other changes as “retreads” of inadequate safety measures.

Robert Frommer, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that’s led closely watched litigation over the technology, called the changes “window dressing” from a company in “panic mode.”

“This is window dressing that doesn’t address the fundamental problem, which is that police officers are the ones deciding who and when to search, and that should be done by judges with real warrants,” he said.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a professor at the George Washington University Law School whose scholarship has focused on policing, big data surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, said Thursday’s shifts were “better than the opposite” but called for further scrutiny of the technology in the form of “sustained democratic engagement with the rules and judicial checks on access at a minimum.”

Ferguson said he’s been surprised to see the “growing community backlash” against Flock specifically, given that the technology isn’t new and other companies sell it as well. But Flock and the movement against it have “captured people’s sense that maybe they don’t want to be surveilled all the time,” he said.

More than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have canceled, suspended or rejected a contract or deactivated their cameras since the beginning of the year, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, a grassroots group formed to track the use of license plate reader technology and push back against it. Cameras around the country have also been vandalized.

In Congress, Republican representatives filed at least two bills aiming to restrict the use of the technology in July.

Ian Adams, an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina currently working on a Flock-related research study, said many of the concerns raised about how the company’s data can be used are not new concerns in law enforcement.

“Anyone with policing experience could have reasonably foreseen that what have been termed as ‘curiosity searches’ by officers, searches for private reasons not related to police work, were going to be a problem this technology faced,” he added, noting that other technologies and platforms like the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information had faced those issues.

Law enforcement experts said it’s a common tension of “policing in a democracy” — balancing useful technology that officers say helps solve and prevent crime with the community’s interest and right to privacy.

“It’s a balancing act. A community has a legitimate interest in how information is used, but it also has a legitimate interest in the effectiveness of a police department in preventing crime,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank. “I think a balance can be struck, but it’s more likely to come from department policy than company changes.”

Successes and failures have captured attention

Flock, based in Atlanta, Georgia, often posts to its website what the company deems to be everyday examples of success stories for its cameras, including finding missing seniors and catching car thieves.

But the tech has also been used in high-profile cases that have garnered national attention, such as the search for a suspect in a fatal shooting at Brown University and in tracking and arresting a former North Carolina police officer who authorities say had made threats that he planned to carry out a mass shooting at a festival in Louisiana.

A grand jury declined to bring charges in that case in June, and state authorities said the former officer’s family had taken him to a treatment facility out of state where he does not face further charges.

Abuses have also drawn widespread attention.

The Washington Post reported earlier this month finding nearly 50 instances of police officers charged or accused of using the cameras for unauthorized purposes, many for tracking current or former romantic partners or family members.

Just this week, six employees — including four officers — of the Savannah Police Department in Georgia were fired after they were accused of searching for friends and family using the tool and allowing an officer from an outside agency to use the city’s cameras.

The Savannah department said it was made aware of the misuse through Flock’s voluntary audit function."

The entire story can be read at:

https://apnews.com/article/flock-license-plate-cameras-surveillance-deflock-2a93bc075e2f7ffcca9e04a35d75a3fe?utm_source=app&utm_medium=iOS_share&utm_campaign=more_email

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

August 20: Alex Murdaugh: South Carolina: Question of the day: What caused the judge conducting a pre-trial hearing ahead of Murdaugh's murder retrial to say, as some claim, that his attorney's opening "raised my eyebrows? Well, Fox News Writer Sarah Rumpf-Whitten reports that the defence team had learned that weapons from a recent murder had been connected to the Murdaugh murder case - a new potential ballistics issue. (The trial is set for April 2027) No question, the up-coming murder trial offer much of interest to the readers of this Blog - especially since the defence, led by Dick Harpootlian, is reported to allege that "false physical evidence was presented to the grand jury that indicted him. Can't wait! Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;

BACKGROUND: From this story:   Murdaugh, 58, was convicted in 2023 of murdering Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, at the family’s Moselle estate in Colleton County in June 2021. The South Carolina Supreme Court later overturned the convictions after finding that Hill improperly influenced jurors. The high court ordered a new trial, but the retrial may look significantly different from the first. At Murdaugh’s first trial, prosecutors argued that years of theft and financial fraud were closing in on him and that the killings were an effort to distract from mounting scrutiny.

---------------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "Griffin, one of Murdaugh's attorneys, argued that if investigators determined shell casings from the Allendale case matched those tied to the Murdaugh murders, the defense wants the underlying testing and investigative records. He said such a finding could raise questions about the original ballistics analysis or whether a firearm associated with the Murdaugh case was later used in another killing."

----------------------------------------

STORY: "Murdaugh gun claim collides with bizarre Charleston showdown as lawyers battle over what next jury gets to see," by Writer Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, published by Fox News, on August 14, 2026.  (Sarah Rumpf-Whitten is a U.S. Writer at Fox News Digital, covering national crime, trial coverage, and high-profile cases. )

SUB-HEADING: "Defense led by Dick Harpootlian alleges false physical evidence was presented to the grand jury that indicted him."

GIST: "Alex Murdaugh returned to court Friday for a pretrial hearing ahead of his murder retrial, and his attorneys opened up with a claim that the judge said "raised my eyebrows."

The disbarred attorney appeared before Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin at 10 a.m. in Lexington County for a pretrial hearing ahead of his April 2027 retrial in the killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

Several motions and issues were discussed, including Murdaugh's defense raising a new potential ballistics issue. One of his attorneys, Jim Griffin, told the judge that his team learned through FITSNews reporting that weapons from a recent Allendale County murder may have been connected to the Murdaugh murder case.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters told the court the claim was entirely new to him.

ALEX MURDAUGH LAWYERS ALLEGE ‘FABRICATED’ EVIDENCE WAS USED TO SECURE MURDER INDICTMENTS

"I have never heard the first thing about that," Waters said, adding that he communicates with SLED daily and had not been told of any such development.

"I will certainly look into that, but I would be flabbergasted to find out that actually had happened and no one had advised this office of that," Waters said.

McCaslin appeared struck by the allegation as well, telling Griffin, "As far as the murder in Allendale with the murder weapons, you certainly raised my eyebrows on that."

Griffin argued that if investigators determined shell casings from the Allendale case matched those tied to the Murdaugh murders, the defense wants the underlying testing and investigative records. He said such a finding could raise questions about the original ballistics analysis or whether a firearm associated with the Murdaugh case was later used in another killing.

Waters stressed that he had not read the FITSNews material and said he does not generally follow media coverage of the case.

"I don’t watch the podcast and I don’t read the blogs because I try to base what I’m doing on the evidence and not on speculation that’s out there in the media," Waters said. "It would blow my mind if something like that had happened in SLED and not call me."

I try to base what I’m doing on the evidence and not on speculation…— Creighton Waters, lead prosecutor in the Alex Murdaugh trial

Waters later said that SLED has now told him there is no known ballistics match linking a .300 Blackout used in an Allendale County shooting to another crime. Waters said the firearm evidence from the Allendale case was entered into a ballistics database but "there have been no leads or no matches on that."

"I’m going to find out more and double check and we’re going to run this down," Waters said, adding that SLED told him there were "no leads or hits" involving the .300 Blackout used in the Allendale shooting.

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said the defense wants more than a verbal assurance from investigators and remains skeptical of SLED because of issues it has raised over the agency’s handling of evidence in the Murdaugh case.

"I have never questioned Mr. Waters’ integrity," Harpootlian said. "But as a result of this case, I cannot help but question the SLED lab integrity and the SLED agency."

The defense also raised the case of Michael Colucci, whose murder charge was dismissed without prejudice after his attorneys alleged the state withheld critical exculpatory evidence.

Griffin noted that former SLED agent David Owen, the lead case agent in Murdaugh’s murder investigation, was also involved in the Colucci case and asked whether Owen was disciplined or sanctioned as a result.

Waters said he was not aware of any finding that Owen had been dishonest, but said he would look into it further.

The discussion centered in part on prosecutors’ Giglio obligations, named for the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision Giglio v. United States. Under that ruling, prosecutors must disclose material evidence that could be used to challenge the credibility of a government witness, including evidence of promises, agreements or other information that could show bias or affect a witness’s credibility. The Supreme Court held that withholding material credibility evidence can violate a defendant’s due process rights.

McCaslin also ruled on whether prosecutors could use Murdaugh’s testimony from his first murder trial at his retrial, although she said what portions can be introduced will depend on the evidence admitted in the new trial.

"I think it’s pretty clear, a criminal defendant’s testimony from a first trial is admissible at a retrial in the same case," McCaslin said.

The defense argued Murdaugh’s decision to testify at his first trial was influenced by the admission of extensive evidence about his financial crimes.

McCaslin rejected that argument, but said prosecutors will not automatically be able to introduce all of his previous testimony.

"If it’s not relevant, it’s not in," McCaslin said. "I’m going to allow it in, subject to what is being testified to in the trial."

Harpootlian said the defense "respectfully" disagreed with the ruling.

He told the court Smith failed a polygraph when asked whether he killed Paul and Maggie Murdaugh and said Alex Murdaugh passed one "with flying colors..

McCaslin warned the defense that mentioning a polygraph without first approaching her could risk a mistrial. Harpootlian joked that she should threaten him with contempt instead.

"You don’t want me to hold you in contempt, Mr. Harpootlian," McCaslin responded, later warning him not to start "screaming polygraph" in front of the jury.

"I got it. I agree with you," Harpootlian said.

McCaslin also said she would personally oversee the jury-selection process in the retrial. The first trial was thrown out after Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca "Becky" Hill was found to influence the jury for the guilty verdict.

Harpootlian asked the judge to directly supervise how prospective jurors are summoned and screened, repeatedly raising concerns stemming from the first trial.

"Wherever this trial is going to be, I will certainly make sure that it is on the up and up. I can promise you that," she said.

Waters pushed back on suggestions there had been problems with that portion of the first jury-selection process, saying there was "absolutely no evidence that there was any shenanigans with that part of the process."

It was one of several issues being discussed in Friday's hearing. McCaslin opened the hearing by saying she plans to take up all but three of the pending motions today.

Next, the judge moved to having a third-party lab, Othram DNA, to independently test DNA found from under Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails.

Griffin said previous testing showed a mixture that was about 99% Maggie Murdaugh’s DNA and 1% from an unknown male.

He said the defense wants the private lab Othram to conduct more advanced testing, including SNP analysis, in hopes of learning more about the unidentified male DNA.

"We want to pay for it, and we want to get on with it," Griffin told the court, saying that the testing could take 60–90 days.

Waters said the state is willing to make evidence available to the defense, but wants SLED to first process and quantify the untouched reserve sample and then stop before additional testing.

"If we’re going to burn it, it needs to be burned in a fashion that is fair to both sides," Waters said.

Griffin objected, arguing SLED has had the evidence for years and only sought additional testing after the defense asked to examine it.

"They’ve had five years," Griffin said. "Now, because we asked to test it, they want to take control of our testing. I mean, that’s not fair."

"I don’t have any faith they won’t screw this up," Harpootlian said. "Why don’t we have an independent right to examine the untested DNA?"

McCaslin focused on preserving enough material for both sides.

"You know, it’s not like a piece of paper. I can make a copy of it," the judge said. "It’s just such a little amount."

Following a short morning break, Harpootlian began questioning his own defense team member, defense attorney Phil Barber, as a witness in their venue change request.

"Would you agree that parking is difficult in downtown Charleston?" Waters asked.

"I would agree that parking is difficult in downtown Charleston if you're not permitted to parking," Barber said.

ALEX MURDAUGH MURDER SAGA LANDS RIGHT BACK WHERE IT STARTED BEFORE NEXT LOWCOUNTRY COURTROOM BATTLE

Throughout his questioning, Barber repeatedly said that Charleston was no more expensive than other parts of the Palmetto State.

"You don't think the cost of living is higher in Charleston?" Waters said.

"McDonald's is the same price in Charleston as anywhere else," Barber replied.

Harpootlian also noted that Murdaugh "was broke" and that the defense is conscious of the cost of the retrial.

"And when I'm there [Charleston], not on business. Well, sometimes on business too. I stay at really nice hotels and eat at really nice restaurants but we won't be for this. He's broke," Harpootlian said. "He hasn't had a job in four years and if he did have a job, the feds or the state would be seizing the money."

"Colleton County is poison…— Dick Harpootlian, lead defense attorney for Alex Murdaugh"

"Colleton County is poison," Harpootlian said.

McCaslin ruled that the trial would be removed from the Circuit and said that a formal motion would be released a later date.

"This ruling rests on four grounds. First, the exceptional rate of juror disqualification during the January 23rd jury selection. Second, the community prejudice arriving from the size of the county and the long-standing association between the defendant's family and the 14th Circuit. Third, the South Carolina Supreme Court's determination that the former Colleton County Clerk of Court improperly influenced the jury, depriving the defendant of his constitutional right to an impartial jury. And fourth, the form of publicity surrounding this case, there's case law that says, I can't transfer something just for publicity," McCaslin said.

"But with the four grounds that I've just stated, I am transferring it," she said.

Moving on to the last ruling, McCaslin ruled for in-camera proceedings from the previous trial to be unsealed; jurors' names will be protected and redacted. She did not take up the three existing motions, which include: the motion to exclusive evidence, the motion to admit evidence of motive, and the motion to dismiss the murder charges.

The judge said it would be too premature to issue rulings and will plan to issue those rulings closer to the retrial. The next pretrial hearing will be on Nov. 13 at 10 a.m.

ALEX MURDAUGH DEMANDS NEW EVIDENCE SEARCH IN HUNT FOR CRACKS IN CASE

Nathan S. Williams, a South Carolina federal criminal defense attorney and former Assistant U.S. Attorney who served as Criminal Chief for the District of South Carolina, told Fox News Digital a second trial changes the strategic landscape for Murdaugh.

"There is no surprising the government or the state at trial," Williams said. "He's given his testimony, they can prepare infinitely now to cross-examine him."

"That tends to be frankly more helpful for the state. I think they usually have a better chance on retrial," he added, while noting that limits on some of the state's evidence could cut the other way.

ALEX MURDAUGH'S DOUBLE MURDER CONVICTION UNANIMOUSLY OVERTURNED BY SOUTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT

Murdaugh, 58, was convicted in 2023 of murdering Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, at the family’s Moselle estate in Colleton County in June 2021. The South Carolina Supreme Court later overturned the convictions after finding that Hill improperly influenced jurors.

The high court ordered a new trial, but the retrial may look significantly different from the first.

At Murdaugh’s first trial, prosecutors argued that years of theft and financial fraud were closing in on him and that the killings were an effort to distract from mounting scrutiny.

MURDAUGH DEFENSE PLANS ALTERNATE SUSPECT PUSH AS DNA QUESTIONS LOOM OVER RETRIAL

The South Carolina Supreme Court did not rule that all evidence of Murdaugh’s financial wrongdoing was inadmissible, but it said prosecutors had been allowed to go too far into the details during the first trial.

LISTEN TO THE NEW 'CRIME & JUSTICE WITH DONNA ROTUNNO' PODCAST

Williams said he expects the amount of financial evidence to shrink from the first trial. He said, "there will definitely be less," adding, "How much less I think will be a good question."

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian represents his client, Alex Murdaugh, on Monday, June 29, 2026, at a status hearing at the Marc H. Westbrook Judicial Center in Lexington, South Carolina. Murdaugh will be retried in the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of his wife and son, after his original conviction was overturned due to jury tampering. (Tracy Glantz/The State via Pool)

Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense in 2023 and admitted lying to investigators about his whereabouts shortly before Maggie and Paul were killed. He denied murderingthem.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the attorney general's office and Murdaugh's defense team for comment."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/alex-murdaugh-explosive-bid-blow-up-murder-case-hinging-dna-dirty-money-lies-expert#origin=https:/www.google.com/&cap=swipe,education&webview=1&dialog=1&viewport=natural&visibilityState=prerender&prerenderSize=1&viewerUrl=https:/www.google.com/amp/s/www-foxnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.foxnews.com/us/alex-murdaugh-explosive-bid-blow-up-murder-case-hinging-dna-dirty-money-lies-expert?usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%25253D&amp_kit=1

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!