You're not getting it. We could discuss this in a nuanced manner if the evidence existed, and could be weighed by the Court.
We no longer can, because the State, the very entity we bequeathe with the sole authority to conditionally suspend civil liberties in the condition of a proven beyond a reasonable doubt case, and the abscense of exculpatory evidence, destroyed it.
The Court must assume that that information was so damaging to the State's case, that even with all of the disincentives the legal system has to offer, a State agent committed the heinous crime of denying to the defense evidence lawfully subpoena'd.
If the Court does not exonerate, it's recognizing, and cutting law enforcement a check to undermine the rights of a defendant, and more importantly, their counsel, to lawfully surface potentially material exculpatory evidence by whoopsy-ing the material in question, and trading one of their own to make it stick.
This undermines everything the legal system has been predicated upon. This attacks the very integrity and independence of the American judiciary. No one is above the law. Especially the Government.
You may not like the defendant; I don't, but I like a rigged system even less. These are the cases that really test the mettle and integrity of the legal system, and the claim we live in a society subject to the rule of law.
It could be you in the same position. Don't even try that "Pah, never happen", because you don't know. That's why due process matters. This person was entitled to the same procedure as everyone else, and the State has willfully deprived him of it.
Also, at that point I had not read the ruling you referred to, which oddly clearly states the erased data was just a copy loaded to Dropbox; meaning the data exist in at least three places, one one of which is the one in question, that is the disk on the laptop that was erased by the agent. No explanation is provided of what happened to the other copies.
See “parties learned that a paralegal in Mr. Wilkinson's office named Karri Layton had uploaded the Neal recordings to a Dropbox account” here: