Opinion ID: 2519810
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Brady and Disclosure of the 1990 Complaint

Text: The Court of Appeal here concluded that applying section 1045's five-year limit on disclosure to withhold the 1990 complaint from defendant would have infringed on defendant's right to a fair trial. We disagree. The 10-year-old complaint against Officer C. falls short of the constitutional materiality standard that the high court established in Brady, supra, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, and therefore is not subject to disclosure. Based on defendant's assertion that his defense may be that the two arresting officers had coached witnesses to fabricate evidence of child molestation against him, the trial court, after an in chambers review of the personnel files of the two officers, ordered disclosure of the names and addresses of witnesses to an incident 10 years earlier, when Officer C. failed to report another officer's improper use of mace on a suspect. Officer C.'s failure to report his partner's use of mace cannot be considered constitutionally material to the charge in this case of lewd conduct on a seven-year-old boy. In other words, it is not reasonably probable that a 10 year old complaint of failing to report another officer's improper use of mace would alter the outcome of defendant's trial. (See Ritchie, supra, 480 U.S. at p. 57, 107 S.Ct. 989.) It is undisputed that materials that may be used to impeach a witness fall within the class of information subject to Brady because impeachment information affects the fairness of trial. {Strickler v. Greene, supra, 527 U.S. at p. 282, fn. 21, 119 S.Ct. 1936; see United States v. Ruiz (2002) 536 U.S. 622, 122 S.Ct. 2450, 153 L.Ed.2d 586.) In this case Officer C.'s general veracity was called into question by the 1990 finding that he failed to report a fellow officer's use of mace, after denying the incident had occurred. Nonetheless, that derelictionfailure to report misconduct by a fellow officerwas similar in kind to the disclosed incident in 1996 when Officer C. failed to report an assault on a prisoner by a fellow officer. Neither incident involved coaching witnesses to fabricate evidence. Because in this case the 10-year-old complaint is not material evidence under the high court's decision in Brady, supra, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, and is not discoverable evidence under California's Pitchess statutory scheme, as it is more than five years old (§ 1045(b)(1)), the trial court's order directing the police agency to disclose to the defense information about the macing incident was improper. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal erred in affirming that disclosure order.