Yes.
From the same CNN aticle:
I’ve handled two cases involving over a million documents.
The issue is (largely) that modern communication systems generate “documents” like raindrops. Police (and civil parties) copy whole hard drives or try to locate relevant documents using broad search terms. How many files would be on your phone or PC right now?
The “headline” figure given in court or press releases is typically the raw number of files obtained, and bears no resemblance to the number of relevant documents.
As an example, in one of the civil cases involving over 1M documents I was involved in - we were able to get that number down to less than 100k using some basic exclusion techniques like getting rid of repetition etc. We were able to get it down to about 10k by careful use of complex boolean searches. We “hand read” 10k of documents. The number of actually key documents was less than 20 or so. And there was really only about 5 that affected the overall outcome.
IANAL so this is a WAG - but for example, how many different documents would a request to extradite from one state to another generate? I assume it’s a court hearing with assorted submissions, a transcript. Then I assume there’s a standard form ordering transfer, along with the written judgement. Did each officer involved in the arrest and search of his bag in the station have to file a report, plus depositions(?), plus the inventory of bag, photos of each item, a form for the logging of evidence, probably then statements and their transcripts… any email correspondence with New York or the FBI about their suspect; Then they send this stuff to New York where it’s also filed as correspondence - would the DA bother to eliminate duplicates, or should they? Safer to turn over everything. . I can imagine that alone generates a decent number of documents. Then they probably got all his medical records, academic records, interviews related to his actions, reports from the officers collecting these…
It’s not difficult to imagine the pile growing exponentially.
Moderator Note
(There may be other examples in this thread as well)
Please note that this is in FQ, so stick to the facts of the case, keep the WAG speculation to a minimum, and save opinions and political commentary for more appropriate forums.