Opinion ID: 77702
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Withholding of Police Reports

Text: 12 Crowe alleged in his state habeas petition that the state failed to disclose to the defense police interview notes and reports from a May 1988 investigation of drug use by Wickes employees, in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Crowe argues that the suppression of these materials prejudiced his defense in two main ways: the evidence would have enabled him to impeach the two Wickes employees who testified at the sentencing trial, and it would have bolstered his theory that he killed Pala in an argument about drug use rather than for money. We disagree and conclude that Crowe has not established prejudice. 13 The first argument fails for two reasons. First, the alleged Brady evidence would not have enabled Crowe to impeach the testimony of the Wickes employees, Ben Covington and Huey Moss, because it was irrelevant to their testimony. Covington and Moss testified about their discovery of the crime scene the morning after the murder. They also testified that Crowe had asked them for $1,500 in the weeks before the murder, and were cross-examined on their knowledge of Crowe's need for the money. Their testimony never mentioned drugs, and neither Covington nor Moss is named in the alleged Brady materials. Crowe argues that the Brady evidence would have been admissible to show the witnesses' bias, under a theory that their testimony was colored by their fear of prosecution for drug offenses, but nothing in the record suggests that the two men even knew about the investigation into allegations of drug use by their coworkers. 14 Second, even if the evidence were admissible for some impeachment purpose, Crowe has not established a reasonable probability that introducing it would have changed the jury's decision. Much of the testimony of Moss and Covington was cumulative; the brutality of the scene that they described was conveyed even more powerfully to the jury through dozens of photographs and the testimony of police investigators. The testimony regarding Crowe's need for money, which was probed by defense counsel on cross-examination, was consistent with Crowe's first two confessions, which provided even greater detail about his financial situation. 15 Crowe's second argument also fails. The alleged Brady evidence would not have bolstered Crowe's statement in his third confession that he killed Pala to prevent him from telling Crowe's wife about Crowe's drug use. The third confession was highly unreliable. Given a year after the murder, the third confession differed sharply from the two confessions given the day after the murder and from Crowe's statement of innocence six months after the murder at the suppression hearing, and the third confession was inconsistent with the physical evidence at the crime scene. The alleged Brady materials also do not directly corroborate the story Crowe told in the third confession. They provide no support for Crowe's allegation that Joe Pala knew about Crowe's drug habit. With respect to Crowe's use of drugs generally, the police reports are inconsistent and contradictory. Two employees, including one who knew Crowe very well, denied that Crowe had ever used drugs. One employee stated that she had smoked marijuana with Crowe once but did not think he ever used cocaine. Two other employees told police of their firsthand knowledge that Crowe used cocaine. 16 Crowe argues that the alleged Brady evidence would have impeached the sheriff's testimony about the third confession, but that testimony was largely consistent with the contents of the reports. Sheriff Earl Lee testified that drugs [had] come up in the investigation and he recalled hearing that Crowe had used marijuana. Lee admitted that he investigate[d] early on cocaine and marijuana use of some [Wickes] employees but did not recall hearing that Crowe had used cocaine before Crowe said so in the third confession. Two of the police reports explicitly mention cocaine use by Crowe, but Lee's failure to recall that fact would not have undermined the thrust of his testimony: that Crowe had nearly a year after the drug investigation to concoct and refine his story about his drug-related motive for the murder. Crowe cannot establish that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3383, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985); see Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 282, 119 S.Ct. 1936, 1949, 144 L.Ed.2d 286 (1999). The Brady evidence does little to bolster the defense's theory of the murder, and it cannot reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict of death. Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 435, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 1566, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995).