Opinion ID: 791948
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: materiality of the evidence related to abundiz's residential burglary charge

Text: 50 Barker makes two claims based on the evidence related to Abundiz's residential burglary charge. 8 First, he argues that the withheld evidence shows that Abundiz was likely in his probable cause hearing at the time he claims to have talked with Barker on June 14 around 10 a.m., a time when one could infer that Barker confessed. The effort to label this evidence as material fails because the facts do not bear out Barker's story line. Abundiz did not testify that Barker confessed on June 14. Rather, he claimed only that Mr. Barker talked to [him] while in jail 9 (emphasis added) on June 14. The alleged confession was on a different date. Merely talking is vastly different from confessing. A confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, the defendant's own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus, had the June 14 meeting involved a purported confession, then evidence undermining the likelihood that such a confession occurred would surely hold more sway than evidence of a mere conversation. Unfortunately for Barker, the evidence does not support his claim of a June 14 confession. 51 To the extent the timing of the probable cause hearing undermines the June 14 conversation, it is of minimal significance because the defense established at trial that Barker probably was in another courtroom at that time. Whether Barker was in one courtroom and Abundiz in another (according to the withheld evidence), or whether Barker was in one courtroom and Abundiz in a holding cell (according to the testimony), the implication is the same. In either scenario, the two men probably were in different places when Abundiz claims they spoke. 52 Barker's second argument is that the withheld evidence would have shown that the State agreed to drop a residential burglary charge against Abundiz in exchange for favorable testimony. From a series of events that occurred in June 1999, Barker tries to craft a theory of collusion that the State induced Abundiz to fabricate his testimony. Like the June 14 confession theory, this claim too rests on conjecture. 53 According to Barker, the undisclosed evidence would tell the following tale: On June 14, 1999, the same day Abundiz claims he and Barker talked in the holding cell, Abundiz met with the same detective who identified Barker based on Brown's description, Detective Salinas, to talk about the residential burglary. Detective Salinas's report on the meeting does not indicate that they discussed Abundiz's burglary of a JC Penney, which Salinas had written up only four days earlier. Also absent is any notation that Abundiz had information about the clown robbery. Barker is skeptical that Abundiz, a drug addict facing a $20,000 bail, would have passed up an opportunity to use his supposed knowledge about the Payless robbery as a bargaining chip. Barker surmises that [a] reasonable juror would search for some other explanation for why either Abundiz did not disclose the confession (i.e. it never happened) or why Detective Salinas did not write it down (i.e. it might not sound as credible coming from somebody in Salinas' position, being already involved and going to testify in the following days in the first Barker trial). The suppression of the evidence prevented the defense from telling this tale because, without the evidence, Barker's attorney was not aware that Abundiz had met with Detective Salinas the day Barker and Abundiz allegedly talked, or that the State dropped the residential burglary charge against him. 54 The flaw in Barker's theory is that it is mere speculation. Cf. Downs v. Hoyt, 232 F.3d 1031, 1037 (9th Cir.2000) (holding that undisclosed evidence of several leads in the sheriff's files was not material because defendant's theory that they might have helped his case was speculative and he did not show how the evidence might have altered the outcome). He has not pointed to any evidence that the State induced Abundiz to conjure up confessions or that Detective Salinas's June 14, 1999, meeting with Abundiz involved the Payless robbery. The most Barker can offer is a theory woven largely of threads he has created himself to link pieces of evidence. That is not enough: The mere possibility that an item of undisclosed information might have helped the defense, or might have affected the outcome of the trial, does not establish `materiality' in the constitutional sense. Croft, 124 F.3d at 1124(quoting United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 109-10, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976)). 55 Even if the prosecution did hide one of the benefits it gave Abundiz, a deal involving the residential burglary charge would have very nearly replicated evidence already admitted that showed Abundiz received significant benefits for his testimony. See United States v. Vgeri, 51 F.3d 876, 880(9th Cir.1995) (evidence of witness's prior cooperation with law enforcement was not material when the jury heard extensive testimony about her cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Agency). The jury knew that one burglary charge was being dismissed, another reduced, and a sentence commuted. Adding the dismissal of one additional charge to that list of already substantial benefits would not add to the impeachment value of the evidence. More importantly, the presence of such a deal is pure speculation and surely not material. 56