Saturday, August 10, 2013

U.S. defense lawyers to seek access to DEA hidden intelligence evidence

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE9761AZ20130808

(Reuters) - Criminal defense lawyers are challenging a U.S. government practice of hiding the tips that led to some drug investigations, information that the lawyers say is essential to fair trials in U.S. courts.

The practice of creating an alternate investigative trail to hide how a case began - what federal agents call "parallel construction" - has never been thoroughly tested in court, lawyers and law professors said in interviews this week.

Internal training documents reported by Reuters this week instruct agents not to reveal information they get from a unit of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, but instead to recreate the same information by other means.

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