Summary of tweets for Friday, May 5th - Day 18
State witness:
Former FBI Special Agent Doug Hart & now serves at the Canyon County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy /
Part 1
Nate Eaton
@NateNewsNow
·
42m
It's day 23 of Lori Vallow Daybell's murder trial. The prosecution had planned to have former FBI Special Agent Doug Hart on the stand today with a 160-page summary presentation of the case but defense attorneys objected to the exhibit.
Boyce agreed with the defense but said if the presentation was reworked, he may allow it in. Hart could take the stand or another witness could be called. Court will end at noon today.
The public rows of the courtroom are full this morning. Many people are here for the first time - like the woman next to me from Kentucky. Others have been coming every day since the trial started.
The attorneys have all left the courtroom and are likely meeting with Judge Boyce before proceedings begin.
Lori just walked in with a smile wearing a light blue blouse and navy dress pants. The bailiff is reviewing the courtroom conduct rules - keep your phones off, no eating, etc.
Attorneys are back at their tables. Waiting on Judge Boyce to enter the courtroom.
Boyce is on the bench. Before jurors are brought in, Boyce says an updated amended exhibit has been prepared by the prosecution for their witness. He will hear argument on it.
This is the exhibit former FBI agent Doug Hart will use during his testimony. Rachel Smith says with the amended exhibit, headers have been removed along with any slides that could border on argument. The timeline has also been removed.
"It is simply representative text in summary from the iCloud. It was cut and pasted directly from what's already been admitted. The lori4style and lollytime documents have already come in. These items are already in evidence."
Smith: "These texts are the defendant's own words and her conversations with her co-conspirators. The probative value of this significant evidence is unparalleled and Agent Hart has spent hundreds of hours reviewing the iCloud.
To ease his testimony and make it easier for the jury, he prepared this summary. Using this summary will aide the jury in questions and making an ultimate decision on this case."
John Thomas arguing against the exhibit. Says the defense received the presentation last night around 8 p.m. He lists several pages that he says contain "numerous impermissible hearsay statements from witnesses who have testified already or witnesses who have not been called."
Thomas says this is "far outside what Mr. Hart can testify too."
Smith says the entirety of the lollytime and lori4stlye iCloud accounts have been placed on thumb drives "to ease any concerns the defense may have." She says the defense received all of these documents in August 2021.
Boyce says after reviewing the exhibit, it can be admitted assuming Hart lays an adequate foundation before showing it to the jury.
Thomas asks if he can be heard on a motion to reconsider. He says 14 pages contain hearsay from other people who have not testified - Melani Pawlowski and others. He is asking the pages be removed. Smith says they are not hearsay but rather conversations from the defendant.
Boyce says he has not made a determination on whether the information on the pages is hearsay. "To the extent there is any hearsay in there, it may not be permissible but the defense would be allowed to cross-examine on those issues." Boyce will allow the exhibit to go forward.
Jurors will remain outside of the courtroom while defense argues that Hart violated the exclusionary rule. Hart is being brought into the courtroom to answer how much involvement he has had with witnesses during the trial.
Lori's attorneys do not think he should be able to testify. Hart is one of the prosecutors main witnesses.
Defense objects to pages 2, 5, 7, 15, 43, 46, 72, 73, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 of the exhibit and says hearsay is contained on each of those pages. Hart is being brought into the courtroom.
Boyce needs to have a brief consultation with his staff and leaves the courtroom.
The judge is back. He explains the court has an order in place that prohibits witnesses from reviewing testimony from other witnesses during the trial. Rachel Smith will question Hart. He is a retired FBI agent and now serves at the Canyon County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy.
Smith asks Hart if he has reviewed or read any witness testimony. He says no. She asks if Hart has been part of pre-trial preparation with prosecutors. He says yes but has had no involvement after witnesses testified.
Hart says he has not spoken with other witnesses about their testimony and has not read or watched any news stories about the trial. "I have obeyed that order rigorously."
Archibald questioning Hart on behalf of the defense. He asks if, as part of Hart's job, he reviewed the statements of FBI employees made in the trial. Hart says no. Archibald asks if he coordinated with anyone about what FBI witnesses would say.
"Over the past three years, I have met with our FBI analysts, accountants, and reviewed reports but I have not discussed their testimonies in any way."
Archibald asks if Hart has communicated with the FBI agent who has been sitting in the courtroom for most of the trial. Hart says no. Archibald asks if prosecutors have relayed any information to Hart about what witnesses have said.
Hart says no and on a number of occasions, he's been asked to leave the room. Hart says he has not spoken with local police about witnesses. Archibald is done questioning.
Boyce says there has been no violation of the exclusionary rule and Hart will testify. Jurors are being brought in.
Jurors are in their seats. As a reminder, there are 10 men and eight women on this jury. Twelve jurors and six alternates. They do not know what position they will play (juror vs. alternate) until it's time for deliberations.
Hart worked as an FBI Special Agent from Sept. 1995-2022. He explains he attended the FBI Academy. His first assignment was in Hawaii investigating drugs, conspiracy, homicides.
Hart then spent seven years at the Nez Perce Reservation investigating violent crimes. He then transferred to the Boise FBI office and supervised the violent crime task force.
Following seven years in this capacity, he was promoted to be the supervisory senior registered agent in 34 counties in southern Idaho.
Smith asks Hart about the training he received to be an FBI agent. He talks about his original training when he began in law enforcement and explains other special training.
"As an Indian country agent, you attend a special crime scene seminar that encompasses a lot of different aspects of crime scene management and investigation. Part of that training was the identification and location of clandestine gravesites.
This means someone has buried a body where they don't want it to be found."
Hart explains that when you exhume a body, it has to be done very carefully. Over the years, Hart has been involved in 20-30 homicide investigations. He has helped investigate over 50 crimes against children. Several of them have involved missing or abducted children.
"The FBI has taken the stance that when a child goes missing, our capabilities coupled with local and state investigators need to be brought to bear immediately so we can seek the best outcome in locating and recovering those children," Hart says.
"If a child is going to be killed, they are typically killed within 24 hours of being abducted so you have a very small window in which to respond and utilize all the tools and resources with our partners to locate the child," Hart says.
Smith asks to admit two exhibits - one is the entirety of Lori's lollytime iCloud account. The other is Lori's lori4styles iCloud account. Each exhibit is on its own thumb drive. The bailiff takes the thumb drives to the witness stand.
Hart's initials are on the thumb drives. He prepared the thumb drives and copied them from the business records obtained from Apple. Thomas objects to having the exhibits admitted due to multiple cases of hearsay in the documents.
Smith says it's communication from the defendant and is relevant to the case.
Boyce overrules the objection and says because these are the accounts of the defendant and her statements, they are not subject to the hearsay exclusion.
Thomas asks the court to provide them with copies of the exhibits. "We don't have time to go through 100,000 pages of documents right now but would like to go over them this weekend." Smith says they were already provided in discovery back in August 2021.
Thomas says his concern is the state will introduce something the defense may or may not have. He wants to know exactly what's on the thumb drives. Boyce says he will allow copies of each thumb drive to be made and provided to the defense.
Rob Wood is assisting Smith with the technical aspects of the exhibit. He is preparing the presentation while Smith continues to question Hart.
Hart worked as the FBI Behavioral Analysis Coordinator in Idaho for approximately 13 years. He was responsible for getting additional training in behavior analysis when needed in different cases.
Hart says there is a special unit in the FBI called CARD - the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team. "They come and help the investigators ensure all the appropriate steps are being taken.
Collectively the unit has responded to over 160 child abductions in the United States in the past 20-plus years. They are the world's foremost experts in those types of cases."
Hart got involved in the Daybell case on Nov. 27, 2019 when Rexburg police contacted him. The CARD team was contacted but not called in.
"We knew very quickly Lori Vallow lied when the welfare check was conducted and due to the spa of time that had taken place (since JJ and Tylee disappeared), it didn't fall under the parameters of a CARD deployment for those things done in the aftermath of a child going missing."
The FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit was also consulted on the case. Cell phone records, business records, tips, leads, everything was followed up on.
Hart was the supervisor over the investigation for the FBI. He was not in charge of the case (the local agencies were) but he was in charge of the FBI role.
Hart's primary role was to be the investigator on the case. He lives in Boise but he traveled multiple times to Rexburg every month. "Due to the complexity of the case and the fact two children were missing, I felt it was important to play an active role given my background.
Moreso than my supervisory role, I play an investigator role in the case."
Hart interviewed witnesses & was present when the search warrant was served at Chad's house on June 9. His biggest role was to examine Lori's two iCloud accounts. It was important to look at the accounts "because of the value of information that's contained in the cloud storage."
"In this instance we have a large volume of direct communication between Lori Vallow and others in this case. We have a number of emails and notes and recordings that were discovered during the review and analysis of the iCloud account," he says.
On June 9, 2020, the FBI Evidence Response Team was present to oversee the search of Chad's property. Due to the size of the property, other FBI agents were asked to help.
The first thing law enforcement did was walk the property to look for evidence. As they were walking the property, they located JJ's grave.
"When you're looking for a clandestine grave, there are certain tell-tell signs that you want to find. If a grave has been dug, the vegetation around where the digging took place is slightly different than the vegetation around the ground.
Typically you'll see a mound of dirt where the grave has been dug or you'll see a depression in the earth where the person has been buried."
Hart noticed a mound of dirt and changes to vegetation in the area. He felt the ground with his hand and it was different. Smith asks to show photos of the site where JJ was found.
We see an image that shows, from a distance, a spot on the property that is yellow. The rest of the area around the spot is green. The spot stuck out to Hart.
A new photo shows a closer view of the yellow spot where the vegetation isn't growing as well. JJ's remains were found in this area. Hart felt the ground with his hands and had a probe (a rod with a point) with him.
"If hard, undisturbed ground exists, it doesn't go in. If you've dug the earth up, it goes in considerably easier."
Hart attempted to put the probe in the ground but it did not go in. "Ultimately we understood why the probe didn't go in. Once we lifted the sod away, we saw a board and rocks were placed on top of JJ's body." The probe was hitting the rocks and board.
We see an image of the rocks that were placed on top of the boards that were on JJ's body.
Hart helped exhume JJ's grave and body. He also helped recover Tylee's remains.
We are back to the iCloud accounts. Hart says he has several years of experience in analyzing voluminous amounts of records. He has personally worked with Apple iCloud accounts and records. "Whatever is on your smartphone is in the iCloud.
It's more than a mirror - it's a storage device of the activity of your phone. It contains your contacts, your messages, your cookies, your streams (data has been deleted but not overwritten), it contains images, videos, the list goes on and on."
Hart says you can delete something from your phone to increase the storage on your phone but if your phone is backed up in the cloud, it still exists in the cloud. "Carved strings" are data have been deleted from the iCloud but not overwritten.
"It's bits and pieces of messages and communication. They don't make a whole lot of sense. The carved strings weren't really of any value to us in the investigation."
Hart says with each section of the iCloud, you can apply filters. You can use a "capture time" filter. He did this often in the lori4style account.
The earliest records on this account go back to December 2000. For this case, Hart started with data from Oct. 26, 2018 - the day Chad met Lori at a Preparing a People conference in St. George.
Time for a morning break. We will be back by 10:30 a.m.
link:
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