Source: http://www.kmbllaw.com/another-update-on-a-not-so-recent-discovery-post/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 11:11:59+00:00

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Two recent Ninth Circuit opinions support District Judge Pregerson’s opinion in United States v. Sudikoff that prosecutors have an obligation to disclose any favorable evidence, not just favorable evidence they think might affect the result.
Comstock v. Humphries says that evidence is favorable when it has any affirmative, evidentiary support for the defendant’s case or has any impeachment value.
United States v. Mazzarella says that a Brady violation has three components “in the post-trial context,” thereby suggesting the components are different in the pretrial context.
In a couple of past posts, I’ve talked about District Judge Dean Pregerson’s opinion in United States v. Sudikoff, 36 F. Supp. 2d 1196 (9th Cir. 2009), in which he explained that the “materiality” requirement we see in post-conviction Brady cases – requiring “a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different” – doesn’t apply at the pretrial stage. (See “A Third Government Misunderstanding: About Its Brady Obligation” in the June 2012 link at the right and “An Update on a Not So Recent Discovery Post” in the October 2014 link at the right.) Judge Pregerson explained that at the pretrial stage there doesn’t need to be such a threshold showing and the government must disclose any evidence “favorable to the accused,” which he defined as any evidence “which tends to help the defense by bolstering the defense’s case or impeaching prosecution witnesses.” Id. at 1199. As also noted in the prior posts, this recognition of a different, lower pretrial standard has been cited with approval in at least two Ninth Circuit opinions. See United States v. Olsen, 704 F.3d 1172, 1183 n.3 (9th Cir. 2013); United States v. Price, 566 F.3d 900, 912 n.13 (9th Cir. 2009).
This post is just to offer another update about a couple of additional, recent Ninth Circuit cases that support this distinction, though a little more indirectly. The new cases are both post-conviction Brady cases, so on their facts they do apply the materiality/prejudice requirement requiring a reasonable probability the result would have been different. Still, they contain a couple of little nuggets that are at least indirectly supportive of the pretrial/post-conviction distinction suggested in Sudikoff (as well as some other nice principles that aren’t the subject of this post, but are additional reasons to read the cases).
The Nevada Supreme Court did not make a clear determination as to whether Street’s [the theft victim] recollections were favorable to Comstock. The court concluded that the information in the [suppressed prior witness] statement was “mere speculation” that did “not contradict [Street’s] trial testimony or rise to the level of a recantation” and had only “minimal” impeachment value. In so holding, the court may have intended to suggest that Street’s recollections were not favorable. However, whether evidence is favorable is a question of substance, not degree, and evidence that has any affirmative, evidentiary support for the defendant’s case or any impeachment value is, by definition, favorable. See Strickler [v. Greene], 527 U.S. [263,] 281-82 [(1999)]. Although the weight of the evidence bears on whether its suppression was prejudicial, evidence is favorable to a defendant even if its value is only minimal. See id.; Milke [v. Ryan], 711 F.3d [998,] 1012 [(9th Cir. 2013)].
Comstock, 2015 WL 2214647, at *5 (emphasis added). This corresponds nicely with Judge Pregerson’s definition of “favorable” in Sudikoff and so provides some nice additional support for his reasoning.
So keep pushing for the use of this standard for pretrial Brady disclosure. Prosecutors should be ordered to disclose any evidence favorable to the defense, not just the evidence that in their view might affect the result.

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