Opinion ID: 2348914
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The State Was Obligated to Disclose the Fact of the Destroyed Letters and Dresselhaus Memorandum

Text: Under the Missouri rules, upon the request of the defendant, without the need for a court order, the state is obligated to disclose the written and recorded statements of witnesses it intends to call as well as memoranda reporting or summarizing part or all of [a witness's] oral statements. Rule 25.03(A). In addition, due process requires that the state must disclose exculpatory evidence, including evidence that may be used to impeach a government witness. Williams v. State, 168 S.W.3d 433, 439 (Mo. banc 2005). In this case, Mr. Taylor requested that the state disclose all witness statements. Prior to trial, the defense sought to exclude Mr. Perschbacher as a witness because the state had not provided complete disclosure of his prior statements in his letters to prosecutors. On a hearing on that motion, Mr. Ahsens represented that the state dug through [its] files and everything we have [regarding Mr. Perschbacher] ... has been given to them. The trial court ordered Mr. Ahsens to investigate whether Mr. Perschbacher had written any additional letters that had not been disclosed to Mr. Taylor. The trial court further ordered the state to produce any correspondence they may have or to say what happened to the correspondence if they got it. Mr. Dresselhaus, the lead investigator for the prosecution in Mr. Taylor's trial, in fact had received dozens of letters from Mr. Perschbacher. Despite the court order directing the state to disclose what happened to the correspondence if they got it, it made no further disclosures regarding Mr. Perschbacher's letters. It did not inform either defense counsel or the judge that a lot of Perschbacher letters had been received and destroyed. At the evidentiary hearing on Mr. Taylor's post-conviction motion, Mr. Dresselhaus testified that he threw some of Mr. Perschbacher's letters away prior to Mr. Taylor's trial without disclosing them to the defense. He testified that no letter was case-specific, and that he considered them a nuisance, so he disposed of them once he was able to ascertain that they did not require an immediate response. When pressed as to how many of Mr. Perschbacher's letters were thrown away, Mr. Dresselhaus averred, I have no bloody  I have no idea how many were received, but he agreed that it was a lot. As the Perschbacher letters were thrown away, it is beyond dispute that they were not disclosed to Mr. Taylor. It is also self-evident that they were required to be disclosed to the defense by Missouri's rules of discovery and the explicit order of the trial court. The trial court's order that the fate of Mr. Perschbacher's letters should be disclosed, even if the letters themselves were unavailable, makes clear that the very fact of their destruction was favorable evidence that was required to be disclosed to the defense. The state also intentionally failed to disclose a memorandum that Mr. Dresselhaus composed regarding an April 2001 interview he conducted with Mr. Perschbacher. This memorandum plainly was within the scope of the disclosure required by the rules and the trial court's order. Yet, again, despite representing to the court and defense counsel that the state had disclosed everything we have, Mr. Ahsens testified at the evidentiary hearing on this motion that he had a copy of this memorandum prior to trial and he made a conscious choice not to disclose it to the defense (or the court). At the motion hearing, Mr. Ahsens testified that he did so because he personally saw no relevance whatsoever to [Mr. Taylor's] case in the memorandum. Mr. Ahsens so testified, and so concluded, despite the express statement in the memorandum that Mr. Perschbacher's information about the Taylor homicide could become important and it might become necessary for him to testify. Mr. Ahsens also testified that disclosure of the memorandum might reveal information about an ongoing highway patrol investigation into the truth of Mr. Perschbacher's allegations. In other words, the police were investigating whether Mr. Perschbacher's prior allegations were false, and Mr. Ahsens did not want to reveal this while the investigation was ongoing. [3] He made the choice not to disclose this memorandum despite the direct order of the trial court to produce all such evidence. No request was made for an in camera review of the memorandum by the trial court or for guidance by that court as to whether the memorandum could be excluded from the production the court had required. [4] Despite this evidence, the motion court adopted the prosecution's self-serving finding that his failure to disclose this memorandum was made in good faith. This was clear error. Neither the prosecution nor the defense has the authority to knowingly overrule a direct ruling by the trial court or to intentionally disobey this Court's rules designed to protect the integrity of the process. Here, this Court's rules and a direct order of the trial court required the document to be disclosed. The prosecutor's purposeful decision not to comply with the order or reveal his decision not to produce the document to the court simply is not an error that can be made in good faith.