DISCOVERY

 The comments section on the blog has exploded in a manner not seen since the heady early days of our humble blog when blogging and commenting on a blog was a new experience- comparable to the first time you posted a Tik Tok on that matcha you sipped. 

What caught our eye in the nearly three hundred comments (eat your heart out DOM) was the one that said that Michael Von Zamft routinely gave a discovery lecture to new prosecutors in which he compared discovery responses by the prosecution to a chess match, and encouraged prosecutors to walk close to- if not over the line- when fulfilling their constitutional duties to provide discovery to the defense. 

This is indefensible. We compare it to the Nixon smoking gun tape of June 23, 1972 between Nixon and HR Halderman in the Oval Office. 

If this is true, then the culture of the Miami States Attorneys Office is broken and Ms. Rundle needs to resign. She cannot remain State Attorney when her office was training young prosecutors to not do justice. It is as simple as that. We do not make this statement lightly. But then the existence of this lecture is grounds for disbarment for attorneys who gamed the system and did not fulfill their constitutional duties as prosecutors. There is no excuse for playing games with discovery when lives are at stake. Period. End of discussion. 

Discovery is not a game. It is a solemn obligation that prosecutors have to provide the defense with all the information they have about the case. If they hold back information, especially exculpatory Brady material, then innocent people go to jail. Discovery is not a game. It is not a chess match and there should be no decisions about it. The defense should get what the prosecution has. Period. 

We once had a case where we stumbled upon the fact that a cooperating co-defendant had given a statement and the lead prosecutor intentionally withheld it while we deposed the co-defendant. His excuse- the statement was not inculpatory so he didn’t need to provide it. 

Now we understand why he did what he did. 

We call upon the FACDL to draft a motion in which prosecutors are forced to disclose whether they received the MVZ lecture and whether they have engaged in discovery following his suggestions.  The motion should be distributed and every defense attorney should file it. We also call upon the Miami Dade State Attorneys Office to provide that lecture- the comments indicate that the Power Point exists. 

How long has this been going on? How many thousands of defendants were deprived of the information in their cases that they were entitled to? 

This is serious. If true, this is proof that the culture of the Miami State Attorneys Office is broken and cannot be fixed with the current administration - who knew what was going on and stood by silently as the rules of discovery and fairness were perverted by the ignorance and ego of a chief prosecutor out of control.  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke. 

If a generation of prosecutors has been trained to game the system, then the Miami State Attorneys Office is broken beyond repair. 

This discovery lecture is the smoking gun that may bring our State Attorney down. 

Here is the comment 

We have been asked to repost because it seems to have disappeared:
Spoiler Alert! Every year for decades Von Zamft “taught” all new and current prosecutors (hundreds a year) about discovery. He generally used three outlines (most recents the training director gave out in 2022 and 2023). Two of these three outlines encourage all Miami Dade prosecutors to prepare their witnesses to testify TOGETHER in a GROUP. Page 5 of MVZ outline “Joint Meetings. Do not be afraid of this. There is no rule against it and it is not unethical. If you do this, decide how you want to group them; for example all witnesses on same or similar point. Police officers.”
Page 3 of outline number two “Joint meetings. Can be very helpful. At times will trigger each witnesses testimony…not unethical.” Miller was training director at one time at SAO (so was MVZ ironically). Based on the above, is it any wonder why prosecutors believe there is no problem to have witness collaboration meetings (as Wolfson found in Smith) to “discuss” or coordinate their testimony or discuss legal theories as a group or “help each other remember” or why it’s acceptable to provide a lead detective report to a lay witness in preparation for trial or why it’s acceptable to place witnesses together in same police conference room to prepare them for testimony together or put them in the jail yard together to get their stories straight??? For anyone to say this is not a taught and accepted practice at the Miami SAO and that it is not an accepted culture at the SAO is beyond laughable when it is being taught, and permitted to be taught, by MVZ to hundreds of ASAs every single year. The prior commenter also got it right where ASAs were given a discovery or Brady training outline years ago with a pic of a chess board and were told discovery and Brady obligations were analogous to a game of chess. (That came out either in the media or on the blog.) Once everyone at the SAO gets really honest with themselves and others, we all can try to move forward.