Opinion ID: 757455
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The district court's failure to review Thomasson's

Text: 22 personnel file in camera 23 Maass claims that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to order the government to turn over Thomasson's file for review by Maass or to examine the personnel file in camera for exculpatory evidence. 24 A trial court's decision not to conduct an in-camera inspection of materials is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Hanif, 1 F.3d 998, 1002 (10th Cir.1993). Here, the prosecutor explicitly represented to the court that the BATF had reviewed Thomasson's personnel file at its direction and had found no evidence that Agent Thomasson used illegal drugs or any other Brady material. Maass introduced no evidence that Agent Thomasson's file did contain evidence of drug use or other Brady material. Although Maass introduced some evidence dehors the personnel file of Agent Thomasson suggesting that Agent Thomasson may have used drugs during the undercover investigation of Maass, Maass introduced no evidence that such drug use would be revealed in Agent Thomasson's personnel file. The district court conducted a hearing on Maass' Brady request and listened to at least some of the tapes that Maass proffered to support his Brady claim. During the hearing the prosecution continued to assert that there was no Brady material in the requested file. The district court concluded that the tapes did not corroborate Maass' claims and that there was no evidence tending to establish that the prosecution had withheld Brady material. On the basis of this record, we conclude that there was no abuse of discretion by the district court.