Criminal Defense Exhibits in California

What goes wrong with criminal defense exhibits, and how it is handled

• What goes wrongDefense exhibits need a defense label that does not reuse the prosecution's numbering.

  How ExhibitPrep handles itThe Plaintiff's, Defendant's, Petitioner's, Respondent's and Defense Exhibit templates name the side in the stamp header; the label sequence, and any prefix such as D- or PX-, are set once and applied to every exhibit in the set.

• What goes wrongDiscovery includes a phone extraction's message export, and the court needs the exchange as a readable, dated exhibit rather than a spreadsheet.

  How ExhibitPrep handles itPhone screenshots become PDF pages like any image; an RSMF message export from a collection or review tool renders to a transcript instead — every message with its time, sender and account identifier, deleted and edited messages marked, the export's hash on the first page — and is then stamped in the same sequence as everything else.

• What goes wrongThe case file is privileged and cannot be uploaded to be stamped.

  How ExhibitPrep handles itDocument bytes are processed locally in your browser and are not uploaded to our servers.

• What goes wrongDiscovery produced as one long PDF needs page references that carry across the set.

  How ExhibitPrep handles itBates numbering adds page numbers with the prefix, starting number and zero padding you set — ABC-001 onward — and the count continues across the documents in a set or restarts in each file.

Essential tools for criminal defense exhibits