People v. Charlton

Contrary to the defendant’s contention, he was not entitled to the imposition of a sanction against the prosecution for its failure to preserve a video segment purporting to show the crimes in progress, which was contained in a private video surveillance system owned by the complainant’s employer and was automatically overwritten by the surveillance system one week later. The lost video segment had never been in the possession of the police or prosecution and, thus, the prosecution did not have an affirmative obligation to preserve this evidence. Moreover, there was no evidence that the…