Opinion ID: 2745054
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Information Was Suppressed

Text: To prove a Brady violation, a defendant must show not only that the information at issue was ―favorable‖ to the accused, but that it was ―suppressed.‖ Evidence is ―suppressed‖ for Brady purposes if the government failed to disclose it 7 It is worth noting that the Jencks Act, which codified in large part the Supreme Court‘s decision in Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657 (1957), setting forth the government‘s obligation to disclose prior statements of its witnesses for impeachment purposes, applies at suppression hearings. See 18 U.S.C. § 3500 (b) (2006) (requiring prosecutors to disclose any statement of a witness in the possession of the United States that relates to the subject testified to by the witness on direct examination); Fed. R. Crim. Proc. 26.2 (g) (extending this requirement to suppression hearings); D.C. Super. Ct. R. Crim. Proc. 26.2 (g) (same). 16 ―in time to permit [the defense] to contemplate its implications‖ and to make ―new investigative, strategic and tactical decisions,‖ ―not only in the presentation of its case, but also in its trial preparation.‖ Miller, 14 A.3d at 1111-12. ―[W]here disclosure of Brady is concerned, there is no time for strategic delay and ‗as soon as practicable‘ should be the approach.‖ Vaughn v. United States, 93 A.3d 1237, 1257 (D.C. 2014) (quoting Miller, 14 A.3d at 1111). See also United States v. Coppa, 267 F.3d 132, 142 (2d Cir. 2001) (requiring disclosure ―no later than the point at which a reasonable probability will exist that the outcome would have been different if an earlier disclosure had been made‖); Edelen v. United States, 627 A.2d 968, 970 (D.C. 1993) (disclosure must be ―at such a time as to allow the defense to use the favorable material effectively in the preparation and presentation of its case, even if satisfaction of this criterion requires pre-trial disclosure‖) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the government says it did not suppress information about the true basis for the post-arrest search of the DVD stash and backpack because Mr. Biles still had ―plenty of time to make effective use of it‖ during the lengthy continuance from April 11 to May 4. After a full review of the record, we conclude that the government‘s untimely midtrial disclosure of a completely new and different basis for the search—that is, the government‘s disclosure that the DVDs and items in Mr. Biles‘s backpack were not, in fact, retrieved from the area of Mr. Biles‘s wingspan, 17 incident to arrest—denied Mr. Biles a fair opportunity to challenge the legality of the search. In the confused aftermath of Officer Davis‘s unexpected testimony about the informant and the warrantless search, counsel tried to quickly digest the import of the new information, orally moved to ―exclude‖ the evidence, and asked permission to question Officer Davis at length about the informant. The trial court allowed questioning about the informant‘s prior cases but denied the request to exclude the fruits of the search, and in the process made clear its position that Mr. Biles lacked standing to move to exclude the fruits of the search on any basis because he ―has never asserted the DVDs were his,‖ telling counsel ―that sort of closes the door on anything further with respect to the confidential informant.‖ Thus, even if counsel had possessed the wherewithal in the wake of the belated disclosure to think beyond the informant-related issues and to appreciate the full legal significance of the warrantless search, she had no reason to further move to suppress the fruits of the search on any basis after the trial court‘s standing ruling. Counsel ―cannot be faulted for believing that, by then, the die had been cast.‖ Brooks v. United States, 39 A.3d 873, 882 (D.C. 2012). See also Wilkins v. United States, 582 A.2d 939, 942 n.7 (D.C. 1990) (noting that ―defense counsel did not need to object again to preserve his claim of error on appeal‖ once the court ―implicitly overruled [an] objection‖); United States v. Freeman, 357 F.2d 606, 613 (2d Cir. 1966) (concluding that a colloquy with counsel ―sufficiently 18 enlightened the court as to the point being raised,‖ and that any further showing would have been ―an exercise of futility‖). Given the strength of Mr. Biles‘s would-be claim that the warrantless search did not fit within any recognized exception to the warrant requirement, and the fact that Officer Davis‘s unexpected disclosures ran directly counter to the version of the facts presented by the government in documents previously given to counsel,8 it is hard to read counsel‘s failure to further pursue the suppression issue as logically attributable to anything but the trial court‘s dismissive ruling and the ―hasty and disorderly conditions under which the defense was forced to conduct its essential business.‖ Miller, 14 A.3d at 1113 (quoting Leka, 257 F.3d at 101).9 As 8 The police report signed by Officer Davis stated: ―Mr. Biles was arrested. Mr. Biles[‘s] movies [w]ere stored in a box adjacent to door #2 on a crate. Mr. Biles was in possession of 156 DVD‘s . . . .‖ And as the trial court noted, the version of events Officer Davis presented at trial was ―not at all the way it was posited with respect to the opening [statement] that they just found it incident to the arrest, like it was right there by him . . . .‖ 9 The sheer volume of questions asked by counsel of Officer Davis about the informant indicates the extent to which counsel was distracted by the government‘s unexpected midtrial disclosure. Rather than focusing on whether the warrantless search fit into any recognized exception to the warrant requirement, counsel spent considerable time asking, for example, whether the informant was employed by MPD, how Officer Davis knew the informant, what it meant to be the informant‘s ―handler,‖ how the informant referred to Mr. Biles in the phone call, whether the informant‘s past tips had been reliable, whether the informant had a relationship with Mr. Biles, whether Officer Davis knew what the informant did for a living, whether Officer Davis knew the informant‘s criminal history, whether the informant had any pending criminal cases, whether Officer Davis and the 19 for the government‘s suggestion that Mr. Biles should have sought reconsideration of the court‘s standing ruling, we have rejected the notion that when forced to respond to belatedly disclosed material, counsel must ―evaluate immediately all potential ramifications of the evidence ‗or else waive the right to complain later.‘‖ Miller, 14 A.3d at 1114 (quoting James, 580 A.2d at 643). While an ―ideally vigilant‖ lawyer may have quickly produced authority to persuade the trial court that Mr. Biles did have standing to challenge the search, Mr. Biles was not required to seek reconsideration of the trial court‘s decision. See James, 580 A.2d at 644 (―[A]ppellant‘s failure to move for a mistrial or to ask the court to revisit its spontaneous utterance ruling does not bar his claim here.‖); S.E.C. v. Mayhew, 121 F.3d 44, 53-54 (2d Cir. 1997) (―Generally, a party disadvantaged by a district court‘s ruling is not required to move for reconsideration in the district court as a informant had discussed Mr. Biles before the informant called Officer Davis, whether the informant was under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he or she made the phone call, how many of the informant‘s eight prior tips were related to the Florida Avenue flea market, how long the informant had been providing MPD with tips, whether the prior tips were accurate, whether the informant got paid for the tip about Mr. Biles, how much the informant ordinarily got paid, whether prior tips had led to arrests, whether prior tips had led to convictions, and whether the informant been paid for a tip that led to an arrest in a separate investigation that Officer Davis had been conducting. Following this lengthy cross-examination, counsel asked the court to order the government to disclose ―information on the cases that this individual has worked on before to see if there were convictions‖ and argued that although Officer Davis had testified that the informant had provided eight tips that led to arrests, ―[t]he fact that they arrested someone based on a confidential tip doesn‘t prove that tip to have been correct or valid or anything else.‖ 20 precondition to an appeal from the ruling.‖). In sum, the government‘s belated midtrial disclosure of the true basis for the search, coupled with the trial court‘s standing ruling, closed the door on any future Fourth Amendment suppression motion. It thus foreclosed any meaningful opportunity on Mr. Biles‘s part ―to use the information with some degree of forethought,‖ Miller, 14 A.3d at 1112, and to frame and litigate what should have been a successful motion.10 10 At oral argument the question arose, during Mr. Biles‘s counsel‘s argument, whether the government could have ―suppressed‖ evidence for Brady purposes if the defendant himself may have known about it. The Supreme Court has not explicitly addressed and state and federal courts are split on this ―due diligence‖ question. In the District of Columbia, the federal court of appeals has held that because the government is responsible for ―any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government‘s behalf,‖ it is not the defendant‘s burden to obtain it. In re Sealed Case, 185 F.3d 887, 896 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (citation omitted). Here, the government has not suggested that this is a case in which—like the typical ―due diligence‖ scenario—defense counsel failed to look through a file or the defendant refused to answer a specific question by counsel or the court about a favorable witness he knew about. Mr. Biles knew the location of the items, but there is no indication that he was trained in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. His attorney, on the other hand, is trained in the law but had no reason to know the true basis for the warrantless search. Even if counsel had explicitly asked Mr. Biles why police arrested him and whether officers saw the items in question, there is little indication from the Gerstein affidavit or any other evidence in the record that Mr. Biles or his counsel had reason to understand the precise basis for, or timing of, his arrest or the search of the items. Moreover, the question whether the ―due diligence‖ doctrine is consistent with Brady and its progeny is an unresolved and complicated one. See generally Kate Weisburd, Prosecutors Hide, Defendants Seek: The Erosion of Brady Through the Defendant Due Diligence Rule, 60 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 138 (2012). We decline to address the issue in a case where the 21