this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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I was a bit confused how a Judge would just decide to start investigating some additional matter that is not formally before them to decide.
How do judges normally treat destruction of evidence? Do they not care who committed the crime and just make a ruling on how to infer it? I feel like the court would want to know who has committed something as serious as this but I'm not sure of the actual process for it.
In federal court, a judge has a few options to deal with spoliation;
The last of these basically allows the court to infer (or instruct the jury to infer) that the destroyed evidence was the most possibly damning thing and hold that against the party in question.
Outside of the above, destruction of evidence is a crime. The judge has no power of investigation that I'm aware of, but maybe it just means informing those who have such power.