A loss of important case data from Dallas PD’s servers, as previously reported by the Dallas Express, has begun to affect criminal cases.
On Thursday morning, prosecutors with the District Attorney’s office informed Judge Ernie White that they needed more time to verify with police that all case files for a pending murder case were intact, which resulted in a recognizance bond for the defendant.
Consequently, accused murderer Jonathan Pitts is now eligible to leave prison without paying bail.
Pitts was scheduled to stand trial this week in the 2019 shooting death of Shun Handy. The prosecution asserts that Pitts shot Handy multiple times after a disagreement outside the Han Gil Hotel in Northwest Dallas. The Han Gil was infamous as a den of drugs and violence and has since been closed down and demolished.
Detectives were able to find the data pertaining to Pitts’s case by 10 a.m. Thursday, but by then, it was too late. The prosecution had already been forced to file a motion for continuance.
Dallas Police Sgt. Warren Mitchel has since said that “all the evidentiary items and data are available for prosecution on this murder case.”
While it appears that all information is now present to proceed with this case, it is yet to be seen how many cases will be affected by the DPD’s loss of 8 terabytes of data. The missing data, including photos, audio recordings, case notes, and video evidence, was lost during a transfer from a cloud server to the city’s data center.
The loss occurred during the first few days of April. However, police and IT officials did not report the incident to the District Attorney’s Office until last week. This decision has left employees at the DA’s Office scrambling to determine which cases will be affected by the loss and others questioning why the incident was not disclosed sooner.
“The people of Dallas deserve answers about what happened, why top city staff kept it quiet for months, and what can be done to resolve these critical issues that affect public safety,” Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement.