Opinion ID: 27255
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brazley’s Sixth Amendment Claim

Text: In addition to his due process claim, Brazley asserts that the State’s discovery violation coupled with the prosecutor’s improper opening statement violated his Sixth Amendment right to present a complete defense. Brazley thus argues that the Louisiana Supreme Court’s denial of state habeas relief on his Sixth Amendment claim was “contrary to” or an “unreasonable application of” federal law. “Whether rooted directly in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or in the Compulsory Process or Confrontation clauses of the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.” United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 329 n.16 (1998) (internal citations and quotations omitted). At first glance, this sweeping language appears to reach Brazley’s Sixth Amendment claim. However, Brazley does not point 13 to any authority, and we have been unable to discover any, holding that a prosecutor’s improper reference to an undisclosed inculpatory statement violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to present a defense. Virtually all of the Supreme Court’s cases discussing the Sixth Amendment right to present a defense consider violations of either the Confrontation Clause due to the presentation of State evidence without the opportunity for defense cross-examination7 or violations of the Compulsory Process Clause because the defendant was prevented from putting on witnesses or from introducing evidence.8 In light of the dearth of Supreme Court cases addressing a similar Sixth 7 See, e.g., United States v. Owens, 484 U.S. 554, 557-61 (1988) (analyzing whether the introduction of testimony concerning an out-of-court identification violated the defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause when the identifying witness is unable, because of memory loss, to explain the basis for the identification on cross-examination); Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315-20 (1974) (analyzing whether the refusal to allow the defendant to cross-examine a key prosecution witness violated the defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause). 8 See, e.g., Scheffer, 523 U.S. at 308-12 (analyzing whether an evidentiary rule requiring the exclusion of polygraph evidence, which was offered by a defendant to rebut an attack on his credibility, violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to present a defense); Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 149-53 (1991) (analyzing whether the exclusion of evidence of the defendant’s own past sexual conduct with the victim, as a sanction for the defendant’s failure to comply with the notice-and-hearing requirements of the state’s rape-shield statute, violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to present a defense); Taylor v. Illinios, 484 U.S. 400, 407-18 (1988) (analyzing whether the imposition of a discovery sanction that entirely excluded the testimony of a material defense witness violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to present a defense). 14 Amendment claim, we cannot say that the Louisiana Supreme Court’s denial of Brazley’s state habeas claim was “contrary to” or “an unreasonable application of” federal law.