225-01.pdf

1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA Case No. 08-80736-Civ-Marra/Johnson JANE DOE No. 1 and JANE DOE No. 2 v. UNITED STATES __________________________/ AFFIDAVIT OF BRADLEY J. EDWARDS, ESQ. REGARDING NEED FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 1. I, Bradley J. Edwards, Esq., do hereby declare that I am a member in good standing of the Bar of the State of Florida. Along with co-counsel, I represent Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 (as referred to as “the victims”) in the above-listed action to enforce their rights under the Crime Victims Rights Act (CVRA). I also represented them (and several other victims) in civil suits against Jeffrey Epstein for sexually abusing them. I am also familiar with the criminal justice system, having served as state prosecutor in the Broward County State Attorney’s Office. 2. This affidavit covers factual issues regarding the Government’s assertions of privilege to more than 13,000 pages of documents it has produced for in camera inspection in this case. This affidavit provides factual information demonstrating that the Government’s assertions of privilege are not well founded. It further demonstrates that the victims have a compelling and substantial need for the information requested and have no other way of obtaining the information. 3. On July 7, 2008, I filed a petition to enforce the CVRA rights of Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 with regard to sex offenses committed against them by Jeffrey Epstein while they were minors. The course of the proceedings since then is well-known to the Court. For purposes of this affidavit regarding privileges, it is enough to briefly recount the efforts of the victims to reach a stipulated set of facts with the Government – efforts that the Government has blocked. Background Regarding Unsuccessful Efforts to Reach Stipulated Facts with the Government 4. The Court first held a hearing on victims’ petition on July 11, 2008. The Court discussed a need to “hav[e] a complete record, and this is going to be an issue that’s ... going to go to the Eleventh Circuit, [so it] may be better to have a complete record as to what your position is and the government’s is as to what actions were taken.” Tr. at 25-26. The Court concluded the hearing with the following instructions: “So I’ll let both of you confer about whether there is a need for any additional evidence to be presented.” Tr. at 32. Case 9:08-cv-80736-KAM Document 225-1 Entered on FLSD Docket 08/16/2013 Page 1 of 64 2 5. The victims and the U.S. Attorney’s Office then attempted to reach a stipulated set of facts underlying the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office offered a very abbreviated set of proposed facts, and the victims responded with a detailed set of proposed facts. Rather than respond to the victims’ specific facts, however, the U.S. Attorney’s Office suddenly reversed course. On July 29, 2008, it filed a Notice to Court Regarding Absence of Need for Evidentiary Hearing (DE 17). The U.S. Attorney’s Office took the following position: “After consideration, the Government believes that an evidentiary hearing is not necessary” (DE 17 at 1). The Office asserted that the Court need only take judicial notice of the fact that no indictment had been filed against Epstein to resolve the case. 6. On August 1, 2008, the victims filed a response to the Government’s “Notice,” giving a proposed statement of facts surrounding the case. DE 19 at 5. The victims’ response also requested that the Court direct the Government to confer with the victims regarding the undisputed facts of the case, and produce the non-prosecution agreement and other information about the case. Id. at 14. On August 14, 2008, the Court held a hearing on the case regarding the confidentiality of the non-prosecution agreement. The Court ultimately ordered production of the agreement to the victims. 7. After the U.S. Attorney’s Office made the non-prosecution agreement available to the victims, the victims reviewed it and pursued further discussions with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Ultimately, however, the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to reach a stipulated set of facts with the victims and declined to provide further information about the case. 8. With negotiations at an impasse, the victims attempted to learn the facts of the case in other ways. In approximately May 2009, counsel for the victims propounded discovery requests in both state and federal civil cases against Epstein, seeking to obtain correspondence between Epstein and prosecutors regarding his plea agreement – information that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was unwilling to provide to the victims and information that was highly relevant both to the victims’ civil suit and their CVRA enforcement action. Epstein refused to produce that information, and (as the Court is aware) extended litigation to obtain the materials followed. The Court rejected all of Epstein’s objections to producing the materials. 9. On June 30, 2010, counsel for Epstein sent to counsel for the victims approximately 358 pages of e-mail correspondence between criminal defense counsel and the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding the plea agreement that had been negotiated between them. See DE48-Attachment 1/Exhibit A. These e-mails began to disclose for the first time the extreme steps that had been taken by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to avoid prosecuting Epstein and to avoid having the victims in the case learn about the non-prosecution agreement that had been reached between Epstein and the Government. While the Court ordered that all of the correspondence be turned over to the victims, Epstein chose to disobey that order and instead only produced the correspondence authored by the Government and redacted all correspondence authored by him or his attorneys. 10. In mid-July 2010, Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 settled their civil lawsuits against Epstein. Then, armed with the new information, they turned to moving forward in the CVRA case. On September 13, 2010, the victims informed the Court that they were preparing new filings in the case. 11. On October 12, 2010, the Court entered an order directing the victims to provide a status report on the case by October 27, 2010. That same day, counsel for the victims again contacted Case 9:08-cv-80736-KAM Document 225-1 Entered on FLSD Docket 08/16/2013 Page 2 of 64 3 the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the possibility of reaching a stipulated set of facts in the case. That same day, the U.S. Attorney’s Office responded: “We don’t have any problem with agreeing that a factual assertion is correct if we agree that is what occurred” (DE 41 at 2). 12. On October 23, 2010, the victims e-mailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office a detailed proposed statement of facts, with many of the facts now documented by the correspondence between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Epstein’s counsel. The victims requested that the U.S. Attorney’s Office identify which facts it would agree to. In a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the victims stated: If you believe that any of the facts they propose are incorrect, Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 would reiterate their long-standing request that you work with us to arrive at a mutually-agreed statement of facts. As you know, in the summer of