ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

Federal prosecutors were dealt another major setback on Wednesday after a federal magistrate denied their request for a nine-month continuance in what government officials have called the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

“I think nine months is really pushing the envelope in a case like this,” said U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Richard L. Puglisi.

Prosecutors allege that eight people associated with Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiting firm, conspired to keep more than 600 Thai workers as indentured laborers on farms in Hawaii, Washington and other states.

So far, three of the defendants have pleaded guilty.

But the government already faces an uphill battle in the case, having replaced its entire legal team just weeks ago. The case is scheduled for trial on February 7, 2012.

Prosecutors on Wednesday cited staggering amounts of paperwork that still had to be sorted and distributed to the defendants. Federal investigators were still working through 226 boxes of paper documents and had only processed 29 of 77 hard drives seized from Global Horizons CEO Mordechai Orian’s Los Angeles offices in December. The indictment was filed in September 2010.

There’s an estimated 20 terabytes of data on the hard drives — the equivalent of more than twice the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress, according to U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni.

The interest of justice in the case outweighed the defendants’ right to a speedy trial, she said.

Puglisi at first appeared to agree, asking tough questions of defense attorneys.

“When you look at the number of hard drives, and I can only imagine the daunting task that can be,” he said. “It’s the filtering process that I’m guessing is what takes time.”

He attributed the delay in part to Orian’s request that investigators scan the information for 72 lawyers’ names to protect his attorney-client privilege. The magistrate called the list “mind-boggling.”

To Orian’s attorney, the magistrate said: “If all of this information was produced to you, will you be the next one to ask for a continuance? … Are you going to be ready for trial or is this one of those situations of be careful what you wish for?”

But then Puglisi sided with the defense.

“The United States doesn’t know the enormity of the task. It has perhaps overestimated the time” it needs, he said.

The time lapse between the first indictment to the first anticipated trial date is already 18 months, he said.

The case has drawn significant attention not only for its magnitude but also because of recent high-profile mistakes made in a similar case. In August, the government dropped human trafficking charges against Alec and Mike Sou, owners of Aloun Farms, after lead prosecutor Susan French admitted she had misstated the law in front of the grand jury that indicted the brothers.

French bowed out of the case immediately, citing medical issues, while the two other prosecutors were replaced by more senior counsel.

The new team now includes Nakakuni, Hawaii’s U.S. Attorney, Robert Moossy, director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking Division, and Daniel Weiss, a trial attorney in the same division.

Wednesday’s ruling was Global Horizons’ second reprieve in as many weeks. On Oct. 26, U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra threw out the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s complaint against the company and five other farms for discrimination and unlawful employment practices. That suit had sought $300,000 civil damages and backpay for roughly 200 of the same Thai workers who were sent to coffee and fruit farms.

Ezra gave the government 45 days to its case.