You have a strange idea of how law works. In sufficiently high-profile cases you might be right. In general, no way. And that's ignoring that in criminal cases

You have a strange idea of how law works. In sufficiently high-profile cases you might be right. In general, no way. And that's ignoring that in criminal cases the court cannot even do that, under any circumstances. And of course, people cheat. Asking the defendant to show this material enables them to cheat. Where do people get this attitude that courts are either capable, or even interested in being the final arbiter of truth in society ? They are not, they have no interest in doing so. They exist to keep the peace, and to keep situations from spiraling out of control. They only enforce the law in a very limited fashion, and this whole absolutist faith in the justice system that so many people have is a fantasy. People do cheat in court. For two reasons : 1) hubris. Usually, if a case ends up in court it indicates there is more than a bit of ego involved on the defendant's side. 2) the punishments for lying to the court (esp. if it's manipulation along the lines of "we have 5 versions of the requested material, and yes we picked the least bad one), are far less than people think. > How is this different than any other protected-access evidence material? The complainant always, always, always, always brings the material and shows it to the court and the defendant. So it's very different, and very unlikely to work at all otherwise.