Opinion ID: 429623
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disclosure of Exculpatory Evidence

Text: 5 Petitioner's first and most serious argument is that personnel from the prosecutor's office intentionally concealed evidence which would have been favorable to petitioner's defense, despite specific pretrial requests for exculpatory information. In particular petitioner argues that, in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976), the state deliberately concealed from the defense information about the investigation and arrest of a man named Billy Cole and Cole's possession of a shotgun. 6 Before trial defense counsel had filed a discovery motion, seeking [a]ny material or information within the possession or control of the State, which tends to negate the guilt of Defendant, [a]ll items or information which would reasonably be expected to weaken or affect any evidence or testimony to be used against Defendant, [a]ll items or information which in any manner could be expected to aid Defendant in ascertaining the truth as to any matter affecting this cause, statements of all persons who have been interviewed by an agent of the State in connection with the subject matter of this case and whom the State does not presently intend to call at trial, and names and addresses of all persons who may have some knowledge of the facts of the present case. The state answered these requests in the negative. Several weeks before trial, defense counsel asked one of the prosecutor's investigators whether there was any information indicating that the shotgun stolen from the cleaning shop had been used in other crimes and whether there were other suspects in the case. The investigator answered these questions in the negative. 7 After the trial defense counsel learned that a man named Billy Cole claimed that he had been an eyewitness to the cleaning shop robbery. Defense counsel filed a motion for new trial for prosecutorial misconduct based upon the concealment of the Cole investigation. Cole testified at the hearing on the motion for new trial. The Missouri Supreme Court summarized the circumstances surrounding the investigation of Cole and the shotgun as follows: 8 On February 6, 1979, Billy Cole was arrested by St. Louis police on suspicion that he was the man who had been committing street robberies, using a sawed-off shotgun. At the time of his arrest, Cole had a sawed-off shotgun under his coat. He was identified by one of the robbery victims [presumably reference to one of the street robbery victims]. The arresting officer questioned Cole about where he had obtained the gun. Cole told him that he had found it in a vacant service station lot ..., across the street from [the cleaning shop]. Sergeant Murphy of the St. Louis Police Department, assigned as an investigator for the [prosecuting attorney's] office, was told by Sheryl McGrew, a stepdaughter of the deceased John Cox, that she had heard from some girl friends that Cole might have had the shotgun taken from the [cleaning shop]. Murphy examined the weapon taken from Cole and determined that it was a High Standard whereas the police report on the [cleaning shop robbery] case described the gun taken from the [cleaning shop] as a Winchester. Murphy called William Cox, the [cleaning shop] proprietor, and was told by him that he had seen the gun taken from Cole and could not say that it was the one taken from the [cleaning shop]. Cox testified that he had examined the weapon but could not identify it. 9 Officer Brogan [, another police officer who had worked on the cleaning shop robbery,] testified that he interrogated Cole shortly after his arrest and that Cole denied that he had told the arresting officer that he found the gun [in the vacant lot across the street from the cleaning shop]. He also testified that later, after he had talked to Officer Murphy, he saw Cole on the street and asked him if he would talk to Murphy about any connection between the gun and the [cleaning shop robbery] case. According to Brogan, Cole became angry and said: You're not going to pin this ... case on me. You've got Otis Thompson. You've got the right guy. 10 .... 11 Cole's testimony was that he was across the street from the [cleaning shop] at the time of the robbery, that he saw a man come out of a doorway and he saw another man standing near the doorway pull a gun and fire five shots at the first man. Cole identified the person who fired the shots as a man known to him. That man then called inside [the cleaning shop] and ran across the street. Two men came out of the [cleaning shop] and ran across the street. One was carrying a shotgun which he dropped. Cole could not identify these two men. He did say that appellant, whom he knew, was not one of them. The next day Cole returned to the area and found the shotgun and took it. He later cut it off and it was taken from him by the police when he was arrested on February 6. 12 610 S.W.2d at 631-32. 13 Standards for evaluating prosecutorial responses to defense requests for pretrial disclosure of exculpatory evidence were discussed in Scurr v. Niccum, 620 F.2d 186, 189 (8th Cir.1980) (citations omitted): 14 In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court announced the rule that suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution. ... [Later in United States v. Agurs,] the Court clarified the Brady rule by enumerating three quite different situations in which the rule arguably applies, each involving the discovery, after trial, of information which had been known to the prosecution but unknown to the defense. 15 In the first type of situation ... the inquiry is focused primarily on the type of evidence suppressed, to wit: the undisclosed evidence demonstrates that the prosecution's case includes perjured testimony and that the prosecution knew, or should have known, of the perjury. 16 The two remaining situations each covers a wide range of potentially exculpatory evidence, whereby the prosecution's duty to disclose the same is measured in either instance by the materiality of the evidence to the question of the defendant's guilt or innocence. Whether the evidence is sufficiently material to require its disclosure in a particular case is determined by initially considering whether the defense made a specific or merely a general request for its disclosure prior to trial. If a specific request was made, evidence is deemed material, and a reversal warranted, if disclosure of the evidence might have affected the outcome of the trial. If only a general request was made, evidence is considered material only if it creates a reasonable doubt that did not otherwise exist [when] evaluated in the context of the entire record. 17 Here, petitioner does not contend that perjured testimony is at issue. Petitioner does argue that the pretrial request for disclosure was specific and that personnel from the prosecutor's office intentionally concealed the Cole investigation. 5 18 [A] request for disclosure of particular information cannot be labeled as either specific or general in a vacuum. Rather, the question must be asked whether, under all the circumstances presented by the case, the request was such as to give the prosecution reasonable notice of what the defense desired. In other words, specificity is a function of several factors, including the literal language of the defense request itself, the apparent exculpatory character of the evidence sought, and the reasonableness of the explanation, if any, for which the evidence was not exposed or was not considered to be material by the prosecution. 19 Id. at 190. In the present case the written request for disclosure was general. However, several weeks before trial, defense counsel specifically asked an investigator from the prosecutor's office whether the shotgun stolen from the cleaning shop (and which had not yet been recovered) had been used in other crimes and whether there were other suspects in the case. We believe that this later discussion sufficiently clarified and narrowed the general request for disclosure to give the prosecution reasonable notice of what the defense wanted. 6 20 We cannot say, however, that when evaluated in the context of the entire record, the nondisclosure 7 of the information about Cole and the shotgun might have affected the outcome of the trial. First, the police investigation indicated that the shotgun that had been seized from Cole was not the shotgun that had been stolen from the cleaning shop. Thus, there was no physical evidence connecting Cole to the cleaning shop robbery. Second, Cole's status as a possible suspect in the cleaning shop robbery did not exculpate petitioner because the robbery had been committed by at least three men. Third, neither Cole's status as a possible suspect nor the shotgun detracted from the two victims' identification of petitioner or the fact that petitioner's fingerprint was found beside the cash register. See State v. Thompson, 610 S.W.2d at 633. We also note that the state trial court, when ruling on petitioner's motion for new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence, considered Cole's exculpatory statement and specifically rejected the credibility of Cole's testimony. Id. 8 Finally, we note that Cole's earlier statement to police was not favorable to the defense and in fact incriminated petitioner in the cleaning shop robbery.