The first full week of the trial between the two parties ended on Friday.
The attorneys zeroed in on the photos of the crash site.
The testimony could cause trouble for the department.
On Friday, the eighth day of Bryant's trial against Los Angeles County, the NBA widow took the stand to tell her side of the story about the deaths of her husband and daughter.
Kobe Bryant and his daughter were among the nine people who died in a helicopter crash in January 2020.
She testified this week that after she saw the photos, she had to either live or die. Bryant wore all black and broke down in tears as he testified.
The previous seven days in the LA courtroom were devoid of extreme emotion as a revolving door of LA sheriff's deputies and fire captains testified about their involvement in the county-wide circulation of gruesome pictures from the crash site.
A dismembered torso was among the debris, according to the coroner. She said that most of the victims had to be scientifically identified. Kobe Bryant has tattoos on his arm. The bartender said there were just parts.
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Insider that the most damning consequences of the trial are unlikely to fall on individual deputies. He said that the real problem was the scandal-ridden agency at the center of the case.
Rahmani said the case is important. There's going to be political and legal ramifications for the sheriff's department.
The lawyer for the county denied Rahmani's analysis of the trial.
The testimony in this trial shows that emergency personnel responded heroically to the January 2020 helicopter crash and that since then, the County has successfully prevented any of its site photography of the incident from being publicly disseminated.
The images do not exist in the media or on the internet and the families have never seen them. There are no remaining photos of the victims. The graphic details of the fatal injuries suffered by their loved ones are not the responsibility of the County, according to the statement.
After the crash, the LASD issued a department-wide deletion order in order to keep the photos a secret.
Rahmani said that the agency's attempts may have succeeded if not for the work of intrepid reporters.
A private citizen filed a complaint with the agency after he said he saw an LASD deputy show a bartender photos of the dead at a bar.
A woman who lost family members in the crash filed a complaint with the fire department after seeing a group of LA fire captains and their partners look at photos from the crash.
The first complaint prompted the head of LASD, Sheriff Alex Villanueva, to issue a deletion order to "not let the photos see the light of day".
The department pretended to be ignorant when a Los Angeles Times reporter began probing into the complaint after the crash. The media relations captain and his colleague lied to the newspaper about the deletion order and the complaint.
The footage from the incident at the bar sat on the desk for nearly a month without being reviewed. The department started its own investigation after the LA Times piece was published.
Rahmani said that the trial's first week showed how shady the LA County Sheriff's Department is.
In depositions, on the stand, and in the internal investigation, the deputy's stories have changed. While on the stand, they claimed failed memories.
According to testimony provided this week, the department's efforts to cover up the scandal went even further.
A tech expert hired by Bryant's lawyers told the courtroom on Wednesday that the sheriff's office violated forensic policies when they deleted crash site photos. One of the phones that was used to show crash site photos at the bar was reset to factory settings and rendered any attempt to track the spread of photos impossible.
The victims' lawyers have accused the sheriff's department of deletion of evidence.
On March 2, 2020, Bryant's legal team sent a letter to the county notifying them of the litigation and requesting the preservation of any evidence. Rahmani said that the sheriff's department would have known that they needed to preserve evidence.
Rahmani said it would be considered "spoliation of evidence" if the sheriff's department destroyed or failed to preserve evidence after the crash.
Such actions could lead to repercussions, including the judge issuing adverse jury instructions, though Rahmani said such an extreme response is unlikely at this point.
He was the last witness to testify this week. He was the county's first witness and he defended the deletion order in full.
The sheriff said that he told them to come forward with any photos and details about who sent them in exchange for no punishment.
As he described the initial crash scene as "utter bedlam," he said that dealing with a crisis is more important than policies. There was no way to prepare for this.
The threat of "looky-loos" at the crash site and the fact that only the coroner's office and the National Transportation Safety Board should have taken photos caused him to disagree with his previous statements.
In the last few years, the agency has been the subject of a lot of negative press.
The existence of "deputy gangs" operating within the department was first reported by The Times in the year 2000. The department has been involved in controversy due to revelations about the number of subgroup.
After the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, the agency was once again on the defense after a deputy knelt on the head of a handcuffed prisoner. The deputy was accused of taking photos of the crash site and sharing them with others.
Rahmani said that the crises could cause trouble for Villanueva, who is locked in a fight for his political career.
The Los Angeles Police Department has more oversight than the sheriff's department because it has policing jurisdiction in more rural areas. He said that the people impacted by LASD policing don't have the means to bring lawsuits against the powerful organization.
But someone else did.
Rahmani thinks that the one-time NBA wife could be the final nail in the coffin of Villanueva's career.
It's a big problem that the sheriff's department is acting like criminals.
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