DOJ’s Secret Discovery Methods Won’t Be Shared With Defense

The Justice Department’s “Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book,” the nine-chapter strategy guide federal prosecutors use to conduct discovery, does not need to be shared with defense lawyers, an appeals court ruled. Sharing the five-year-old manual would “essentially provide a road map to the strategies federal prosecutors employ in criminal cases,” the DOJ wrote in a filing. In 2014 the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sued to get access to the manual, but a federal judge ruled that the blue book qualified as a “privileged attorney work product” under the Freedom of Information Act. There is no right to access “unprecedented insight into the thought processes of federal prosecutors,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wrote. The Justice Department wrote the manual following its bungled prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens.