Opinion ID: 4027532
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cason Receipt

Text: The Commonwealth did not disclose the DPW receipt that was in the police’s possession, provided objective impeachment evidence of a key Commonwealth witness, and bolstered Dennis’s alibi. Cason signed the DPW receipt when she picked up her check on October 22, 1991, the day of Williams’s murder. The receipt’s time stamp shows Cason picked up a $94.00 payment for “public assistance” at “13:03,” or 1:03 p.m. During Dennis’s direct appeal, Cason signed an affidavit detailing her recollection of the interview she had with police prior to Dennis’s trial. According to Cason, detectives brought a copy of the time-stamped receipt to the interview, and she “located and gave the detective [her] pink copy of the same receipt. The detective kept [her] copy of the receipt.” App. 1735. The Commonwealth called Cason to testify at Dennis’s trial. She testified that she left work around 2:00 p.m., picked up her welfare check, ran errands, and saw Dennis when she got off the K bus “between 4:00 and 4:30.” App. 733. The receipt serves two functions: (1) it negates her testimony that 40 she worked until 2:00 p.m. on October 22; and (2) it demonstrates that, contrary to Cason’s testimony at trial that she retrieved her receipt after 3:00 p.m., Cason actually picked up her check at 1:03 p.m. Cason admits in her affidavit that she “may have thought that the 13:03, which was on the receipt, was 3:03 p.m.” App. 1736. In light of the time-stamped receipt, Cason explained in her affidavit, she “would have seen [James] Dennis between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. at the Abbottsford Homes, and not 4:00 to 4:30 that is in my statement.” Id.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Dennis’s Brady claim stemming from the Cason receipt. The Court found, consistent with Cason’s affidavit, that the “police came into possession of a Department of Public Welfare (DPW) receipt showing that Cason cashed her check at 1:03 p.m.” Dennis I, 715 A.2d at 408. In denying Dennis’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim, the Court held that Cason’s new version of events “would not support [Dennis’s] alibi [] because the murder occurred at 1:50 p.m., forty minutes earlier than Cason’s earliest estimate” of when she saw Dennis. Id. The Court further held that the corrected testimony “would have been cumulative of testimony of witness Willis Meredith, who testified that he saw [Dennis] at the Abbottsford Homes at approximately 2:15 to 2:30 p.m.” Id. The Court dismissed the Brady claim because the receipt was “not exculpatory, because it had no bearing on [Dennis’s] alibi, and there [was] no evidence that the Commonwealth withheld the receipt from the defense.” Id. 41
The state court ruling was a reasoned ruling that the District Court could understand; no gaps needed to be filled. Dennis was entitled to habeas relief based on the Cason Brady claim only if he could demonstrate that the decision was an unreasonable application of, or contrary to, clearly established law, or an unreasonable determination of the facts. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Addressing the reasoned view of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, we conclude that it unreasonably applied Brady and its progeny in evaluating the Cason receipt and made unreasonable determinations of fact. The receipt would have served as independent documentary corroboration of a key witness for Dennis’s alibi defense, and suppression by the Commonwealth violated Brady. a) Favorability The Cason receipt provided exculpatory and impeachment evidence that would have bolstered Dennis’s alibi defense at trial, so it easily meets Brady’s first prong. Banks, 540 U.S. at 691 (stating that both impeachment and exculpatory evidence satisfy the first Brady prong). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court erred by failing to recognize the impeachment value of the Cason receipt, which would have provided documentary evidence that Cason testified falsely at trial. The United States Supreme Court has made plain that impeachment evidence may be considered favorable under Brady even if the jury might not afford it 42 significant weight. See Kyles, 514 U.S. at 450–51 (rejecting the state’s argument that the evidence was “neither impeachment nor exculpatory evidence” because the jury might not have substantially credited it; according to the Court, “[s]uch [an] argument . . . confuses the weight of the evidence with its favorable tendency”).16 Dennis’s defense strategy pitted his credibility, and that of his witnesses, against eyewitness credibility, Cason’s testimony, and the testimony of the other prosecution witnesses. No physical evidence was admitted at trial. Evidence that challenged Dennis’s credibility, or that of other defense witnesses like his father, was therefore particularly crucial to the outcome of the trial. As the District Court aptly noted: Armed with the receipt, Dennis’s counsel—at the very least—would have been able to show that Cason was mistaken about the timing of the afternoon, by pointing out that she could not possibly have worked until 2 p.m. since she was at the DPW center at 1:03 p.m. . . . The time stamped receipt would have directly contradicted [Cason’s testimony that she didn’t get off work until 2:00 p.m.]. Dennis V, 966 F. Supp. 2d at 508. Without evidence to challenge the veracity of Cason’s testimony, Dennis’s assertion that he saw Cason as he got off the K bus lost 16 This framing of Kyles was taken from Lambert v. Beard, 537 F. App’x 78, 86 (3d Cir. 2013). 43 significant credibility, as did his father’s corroboration of Dennis’s version of his timeline. Further, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court erroneously concluded that the receipt was not exculpatory because it did not affect Dennis’s alibi. Dennis I, 715 A.2d at 408. It held that Cason’s revised recollection of the day “would not support [Dennis’s] alibi [] because the murder occurred at 1:50 p.m., forty minutes earlier than Cason’s earliest estimate.” Id. This conclusion fails to recognize how Cason’s corrected testimony corroborates testimony provided by Dennis and other witnesses, namely, his father. The Commonwealth argues that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reasonably concluded that the receipt did not require disclosure pursuant to Brady because Cason’s corrected testimony would not have made it impossible for Dennis to have been at Fern Rock station when Williams was murdered. Cason’s affidavit stated that she saw Dennis at 2:30 p.m. at Abbottsford Homes. The Commonwealth contends that Dennis could have committed the murder at Fern Rock at 1:50 p.m. and returned to Abbottsford Homes by 2:30 p.m. because the shooter entered a waiting getaway car after the murder and it was a thirteen minute drive between the two. This view unreasonably discounts the buttressing effect Cason’s corrected testimony would have on Dennis’s alibi theory. Although Cason’s corrected testimony, assuming it would mirror precisely what she said in her affidavit, would not definitively place Dennis in a location where it was impossible for him to commit the murder, Cason’s testimony would have strengthened Dennis’s and his father’s testimony that Dennis had been with his father that afternoon and was on the bus at the time of the murder. 44 Validating Dennis’s and his father’s testimony about his alibi on the day in question is sufficient to demonstrate favorability under Brady. Exculpatory evidence need not show defendant’s innocence conclusively. Under Brady, “[e]xculpatory evidence includes material that goes to the heart of the defendant’s guilt or innocence as well as that which may well alter the jury’s judgment of the credibility of a crucial prosecution witness.” United States v. Starusko, 729 F.2d 256, 260 (3d Cir. 1984) (citing Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154 (1972)). That Cason’s corrected testimony does not wholly undermine the prosecution’s theory of guilt does not sap its exculpatory value. The Commonwealth had an obligation to disclose the receipt under Brady because it would have altered the jury’s judgment about Cason’s credibility. Cason’s evidence is not favorable simply because of where Cason said she saw Dennis as corrected in her affidavit—at Abbottsford Homes. Rather, as Dennis argues, the exculpatory value lies in corroborating testimony of witnesses at trial who otherwise received little objective reinforcement, and whose credibility, as a result of Cason’s mistaken testimony in the absence of the receipt, was seriously undermined. The only discrepancy between Cason’s testimony and the alibi established by Dennis and his father was the precise time Cason and Dennis saw one another—Cason claimed to have seen Dennis around 4:00 or 4:30 p.m., while Dennis said it was around 2:30 p.m. As both parties note, the other witnesses that testified on behalf of Dennis were friends and family, who were vulnerable to arguments of bias. To the contrary, Cason offered disinterested testimony that corroborated the government’s theory. Although the 45 Commonwealth indicates that Cason could have been discredited in a similar manner as Dennis’s other witnesses, nothing in the record indicates that Cason shared the type of close relationship with Dennis as other witnesses who testified on his behalf. The receipt contradicted Cason’s testimony at trial. Her corrected recollection, coupled with a specific documentary basis, would have provided disinterested corroboration of Dennis’s and his father’s testimony. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court made an unreasonable determination of the facts and an unreasonable application of federal law in refusing to acknowledge the receipt’s exculpatory and impeachment value. b) Suppression of the receipt The Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated that “the police came into possession of [the] receipt” when interviewing Cason. Dennis I, 715 A.2d at 408. Later, in a section analyzing materiality, it concluded there was “no evidence that the Commonwealth withheld the receipt from the defense.” Id. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court provided no explanation for its latter statement, and we cannot be sure whether the court was assessing the facts or interpreting the law. If it was construing fact, it was clearly unreasonable because the police had the receipt and therefore so did the prosecution.17 See Kyles, 514 U.S. at 437–38. If it was 17 The Commonwealth argues on appeal that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not make a factual finding and that the statement that the police had the receipt was merely framing for the later substantive discussion. In Bobby 46 making a conclusion of law as to the duty to disclose, the conclusion is similarly problematic because the court ignored