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Ninth Circuit Denies Keith Gartenlaub Bail Pending Appeal

 In 2014, the FBI investigated Mr. Keith Gartenlaub, a Boeing IT manager, for allegedly passing top secret plans for the Boeing C-17 military cargo plane to China. Conducting a secret search using a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, the FBI found no evidence of espionage.

The FISA searches, however, allegedly turned up evidence of child pornography on his computer, even though the evidence at trial failed to demonstrate that it was ever viewed or opened.

In December of 2015 Mr. Gartenlaub was convicted of one count of receipt of child porn and one count of possession of child porn. The judge, however, dismissed the receipt of child porn count and its mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years based on a post-trial Rule 29 motion, and downwardly departed from the sentencing guidelines range.

Tor Ekeland, P.C., alongside John D. Cline, represents Mr. Gartenlaub on appeal. Besides denying Mr. Gartenlaub’s motion, the Ninth Circuit docketed a publicly redacted version of one of the search warrants in the case (too large to upload, you can get it off of PACER). The defense, of course, has never seen the FISA warrants, which is one of the issues on appeal.

Here is the order denying bail pending appeal.26 Order Denying Bail on Appeal The case is United States v. Keith Gartenlaub, No. 16-50339 (9th Cir.)

Road to Nowhere

In Liminae: The Road to Nowhere

It takes us about six hours to drive to the rural state jail (that’s owned by two judges) the Feds contracted with to hold our client. Accused of computer crimes, he can’t effectively review evidence in jail – there’s no practical access to computers in the gulag. They’ve seized all his assets claiming they’re the ill-gotten gains of crimes the government can’t identify, and their computer forensics – if you can call them that – have no scientific basis and are full of basic errors and typos. In my decade as a federal criminal defense lawyer doing computer cases across the country, I’ve never come across a case where the government was so completely off.

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Guilty Until Proven Innocent

A defendant’s view from the trenches of federal criminal court This post is originally published to Substack. You can read and follow us there. https://torekeland.substack.com/p/guilty-until-proven-innocent

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