Last Thursday, Judge Karlton denied Salyer's request to continue the evidentiary hearing and proceeded to hear testimony on pretrial motions, including a dispute over the government's interception of proffered attorney-client privileged jail calls. A defense status report filed Monday notes that the government has provided in discovery 6,287 audio recordings, over 100,000 hard pages of documents, and 23 external hard drives with over 1,515 gigabytes of electronic discovery. With more forthcoming, the defense expects a total of 3,000 gigabytes (i.e., 3 terabytes) of discovery.
Although I have no idea what a gigibyte or terabyte are, the defense cites the FBI agent's declaration as stating that a single gigibyte can hold up to 500,000 pages of text, meaning that there could conceivably be up to one and one-half billion pages of electronic discovery (no one expects that much). No wonder the Court granted Salyer's request for a further status conference on March 8, 2011 before a jury trial is set. In the meantime, the defense has 10 days from Tuesday's status conference to file a reply to the government's opposition to the motion to suppress evidence of warrantless searches and the Court ordered the government to comply with the magistrate's judge's Brady/Giglio discovery order by March 1, 2011.
On the civil side, Judge England dismissed a group of tomato processors racketeering and state law unfair competition claims against SK Foods, but the court left standing the plaintiffs' antitrust claim in Morning Star Comp. v. SK Foods L.P., No. 09-0208-MCE. See AntitrustConnectBlog, 11/18/10.