It was a very bad day for the Coleman camp. Their first witness had to agreed, under questioning, that among the copies of the envelopes they were submitting into evidence there had been "copy errors" that had omitted key markings made by election officials on the original envelopes.

Bad enough.

But their next witness -- the one called to submit the rejected ballot envelope (copies) into evidence -- then admitted that the missing marks and comments were the result of the Coleman staff redacting the marks and comments believing that they had been made by other members of their team.

It gets even worse.

One of the judges then asked what a couple of marks were on one of the envelope copies, and the witness explained that the Coleman team had made some of those marks to keep track of them as they sorted through them.

So, in essence, there is no way for the judges to tell what marks and comments were on, and not on the original envelopes. The judges recessed to debate the Franken team's objection to all that, and agreed -- the copies cannot be trust.

Finally, worst of all, the Coleman team had to admit that they had not kept any pristine copies of any of the rejected ballot envelopes around. They even offered to buy them from the Franken team, but essentially they are going to have to subpoena all the 12,000 original rejected ballot envelopes before they can even begin to submit them into evidence.

All in all, it's been a terrible day for the Coleman team, despite the positive spin they attempted put on in afterwards.

Keystone Kops meets Three Stooges....

Sure Coleman and the ReThugs are being (borderline crooked) a**holes here, but Reid should have seated Franken provisionally the day after the recount was certified. You'd think there might be a few little things he could use Al's vote on after all.

And how long exactly do you suppose Harry Reid is going to allow this particular sideshow to go on?

Here's a hint Harry; you can be pretty sure they're acting in bad faith when they have to fabricate evidence.

What a joke....

So could this really drag out the case? I mean are we talking about getting handwriting experts in to differentiate what was written by Coleman staffers compared to what was written by election officials?

The evidence has been contaminated if you can't tell who wrote what on the envelopes.

Did Coleman switch lawyers to be able to argue now what he argued against before? Didn't he argue against counting all ballots before and now he is arguing to count them all? Can't the Franken team point that fact out here?

Tried to get more info elsewhere in MSM land & couldn't get the details given in TPM.

If the presentations are as stated, why didn't the panel chuck the suit? These are highly paid shysters and should be rebuked for the cluster fuck, not given another reach around!

You'd think a screw-up on this level--tampering with evidence--would not earn a second chance for Coleman's lawyers!! I thought tampering with evidence was some kind of offense in and of itself.

I wonder if Franken is EVER going to end up in the Senate. Reid doesn't seem to want him---the Constitution clearly states that the Senate has the right to judge the returns and elections!!!

At this point I think that Coleman's people are just trying to grab every last minute in front of the camera to deny the legitimacy of Franken's term.

What makes you think they're not?

I think, for sure, the judges are bending over backwards to give first the recount and now the election contest the appearance of legitimacy. But, I don't necessarily think they have to do this. The two are essentially tied, after three million votes were counted, recounted and then challenged and reviewed.

Unless Coleman comes up with an election-judge witness who says she was paid by Franken's folks to assign votes away from Coleman, this should be lights- out. THe purpose of an election challenge is to have the losing candidate present evidence showing that the vote tabulation was incorrect and that but for the incorrect tabulation, the losing candidate would have won. The Coleman people aren't doing this. They're essentially looking for another recount. As Magnuson said in December, at some point we stop counting the votes and we reach a decision.

Boy, things must have changed since I practiced law, or they have really, really different rules of evidence in Minnesota.

I can't imagine a judge EVER admitting photocopies into evidence, and for this very reason.

Quimby hired Ben Ginsberg? That says it all. Except for the question of who's paying him. He presumably isn't certified for MN, so he's really just there to bring his Florida 2000 experience.

From my 20+ years of trial experience, getting this much leniency from the judge is usually a really bad omen.
A judge sitting without a jury does three things, 1) s/he makes legal rulings about what evidence is admissible and what is not, 2) weighs the evidence to determine the facts and 3) makes conclusions based on the facts as determined. For example, in a traffic accident case, the judge may apply the evidence rules to determine that a witness may testify that he heard someone else yell, "Look out, he's running the red light!" because it is an excited utterance made contemporaneous to the event , but preclude testimony overheard afterward from someone in the crowd saying, "I saw him run the red light" unless the person who actually said it testifies under oath.
At the end of the trial, the judge weighs the various statements and other evidence that were admitted (that may be contradictory), and makes a factual determination; such as the light was red or it was green. Finally the judge makes a conclusion; such as the driver is liable for the injuries because he ran a red light, or the driver is not liable because the light was green and the other driver should not have entered the intersection.
On appeal, an appellant can challenge whether an evidentiary ruling was proper, arguing that excluded evidence should have been admitted, or admitted evidence should have been excluded. The appellant can also challenge whether the ultimate conclusion correctly applied the relevant law. But the appellant cannot challenge the factual determinations of the judge, except for very limited grounds, such as the argument that the evidence was insufficient to support the conclusion, the judge acted arbitrarily, or the judge made a demonstrable error (stating the car was moving 60 mph, when all testimony was undisputed that the car was moving 40 mph.) An appellate court is not supposed to supplant their interpretation of the evidence, even if they disagree with the trial judge, if there was any credible evidence to support the trial judge’s determination.
In the Coleman / Franken case, the ballots at issue were originally rejected, and (I believe) reviewed twice. Consequently it is difficult to imagine there wouldn’t be some credible evidence to support a factual determination that the ballots were properly disqualified. Coleman has both the facts against him and the burden of proof against him.
If a judge has already determined how s/he is going to rule, s/he can tailor her/his rulings to make it more likely to be sustained on appeal. One of the simplest ways to do this is to reduce the number of issues to be raised on appeal by the appellant. A judge does this by not making any evidentiary rulings against the side that's going to lose. In this case if the judges are leaning toward ruling against Coleman, they wouldn't want to give him the possibility of raising the argument that evidence was improperly excluded. Instead, they give him additional time to re-submit evidence, and let it all in. Then when they rule, they make a factual determination that the evidence didn't convince them that additional ballots should be counted. Once Franken's makes any credible argument that the ballots were properly rejected, Coleman cannot, on appeal, argue to an appellate court that the appellate court should re-evaluate the factual determinations of the trial judges.
Coleman should probably keep his (new) day job, at long as he can. It doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to return to the old one.

Wow. They actually had the gall to submit altered evidence. This goes beyond mere desperation. I'm surprised none of the major mediao outlets are running with this.