United States v. Ganier
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
468 F.3d 920 (6th Cir. 2006)
Albert Ganier III (defendant), CEO of Education Networks of America, allegedly tried to implement an email-deletion policy and personally deleted files relevant to a federal investigation into contracts his company was awarded. He was indicted for obstruction and document destruction. The government's forensic specialist, Wallace Drueck, used specialized software to determine that searches using investigation-relevant terms had been run on Ganier's computer, based on reports the software generated; Ganier moved to exclude this testimony because the prosecution had not disclosed it as expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, and the district court agreed and excluded it. The government appealed.
Whether a witness's testimony is expert testimony when he is interpreting the results of forensic software analysis run on common computer programs.