Opinion ID: 2120717
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Information Subject to the Duty to Disclose

Text: ¶ 103. A court must determine whether materials and information in the possession, custody or control of the state are subject to a duty to disclose under Wis. Stat. § 971.23(1), because not all information must be disclosed. To illustrate, paragraph (a) requires the prosecutor to disclose any written or recorded statement concerning the alleged crime made by the defendant. Wis. Stat. § 971.23(1)(a) (emphasis added). These words convey a relatively clear directive to the prosecutor. By its terms, paragraph (a) does not obligate the prosecutor to turn over a written or recorded statement made by the defendant that does not relate to the alleged crime. ¶ 104. By contrast, paragraph (b) requires the prosecutor to disclose a written summary of all oral statements of the defendant. Wis. Stat. § 971.23(1)(b) (emphasis added). If there were no additional language in the statute, paragraph (b) would seem to impose an unlimited duty upon the prosecutor to disclose the defendant's oral statements. There would be no limit of relevance. [12] Courts would be forced to ask such questions as: Does paragraph (b) require the prosecutor to disclose a defendant's oral statements about her victimization in an unrelated burglary or her involvement in an unrelated automobile accident? Does paragraph (b) require the prosecutor to disclose a defendant's oral statements to an undercover law enforcement officer if the statements are not intended for use at trial? If we were to give an affirmative answer to these questions, we would be requiring the release of the names of witnesses to the defendant's oral statements. Wis. Stat. § 971.23(1)(b). In the first example, disclosing the names of the witnesses would be absurd; in the second example, disclosing the name of the undercover officer might impair ongoing undercover investigations. [13] ¶ 105. We do not have to wrestle with these problems because there are additional words in the statute, namely, the phrase which the district attorney plans to use in the course of the trial. These words place a realistic limitation on the prosecutor's duty to disclose the defendant's oral statements. ¶ 106. Significantly, there are two clear tracks within subsection (1) of Wis. Stat. § 971.23. Paragraphs (a), (c), (f) and (h) and parts of paragraph (e) appear, at least superficially, to create an unconditional obligation upon the prosecutor to disclose certain materials and information if it is within the possession, custody or control of the state. [14] They make no reference to the prosecutor's intent. The unconditional obligation applies to: (1) any written or recorded statement concerning the alleged crime made by the defendant; (2) a copy of the defendant's criminal record; (3) any relevant written or recorded statement of a witness whom the district attorney intends to call at trial; (4) any reports or statements of experts made in connection with the case, or any written summary of the expert's findings or the subject of the expert's testimony; (5) the criminal record of any prosecution witness which is known to the district attorney; and (6) any exculpatory evidence. ¶ 107. Paragraphs (b), (bm), (d), (g) and parts of paragraph (e) of Wis. Stat. § 971.23(1) are different. They explicitly limit the prosecutor's obligation to turn over enumerated materials and information. In each of these paragraphs, the prosecutor's duty to disclose information is conditioned upon the prosecutor's intent to use the information as evidence. Paragraph (b) limits the disclosure of oral statements of the defendant to those statements which the district attorney plans to use in the course of the trial. Paragraph (bm) limits disclosure of wiretap evidence unless the district attorney intends to use the evidence at trial. [15] Paragraph (d) limits the required list of witnesses to witnesses whom the district attorney intends to call at the trial. Paragraph (e) limits disclosure of the results of physical or mental examinations, scientific tests, experiments or comparisons to those that the district attorney intends to offer in evidence at trial. Paragraph (g) limits the disclosure of physical evidence to evidence that the district attorney intends to offer in evidence at the trial. ¶ 108. The majority opinion overlooks the prosecutorial discretion built into the statute when it rejects the state's interpretation of the phrase plans to use. The majority writes: The State maintains that the phrase plans to use embodies a subjective component. According to the State, the prosecutor in DeLao's case could not have planned to use DeLao's statements before DeLao's trial began because a prosecutor cannot plan to use what the prosecutor does not actually know. DeLao asserts . . . that the phrase plans to use . . . embodies an objective standard. We agree with DeLao that the standard is necessarily objective. Majority op. at ¶ 25. In concluding that the phrase plans to use embodies an objective standard, the majority is simply rewriting the statute. [16] ¶ 109. In addition, the majority's opinion departs from precedent. In State v. Larsen, 141 Wis. 2d 412, 415 N.W.2d 535 (Ct. App. 1987), the court noted that the state had possessed for some time prior to trial a written statement from the defendant's cellmate recounting numerous statements [the defendant had] made about concocting an alibi defense to the charges against him. The state did not give the defendant a copy of the statement until a week before trial. Id. at 425. The majority opinion views the state's disclosure in Larsen as a timely pretrial disclosure, but it fails to fully acknowledge the Larsen court's analysis: The state did not give Larsen a copy of this statement until a week before trial. The district attorney explained that he did not intend to use the cellmate's statement until Larsen filed his notice of alibi. We conclude that sec. 971.23(1) Stats., did not require the district attorney to permit Larsen to inspect and copy or photograph the written statement of Larsen's cellmate which was in his possession or provide him with a written summary of Larsen's oral statements made to his cellmate prior to the time the district attorney concluded he would introduce Larsen's statements at the time of trial. There is no suggestion that the state always intended to use the cellmate's statement but, as a stratagem, waited until the last minute to notify Larsen of the existence of the statement and its intent to use it. Id. ¶ 110. The Larsen analysis cannot be dismissed by hair-splitting distinctions. A reasonable prosecutor, including a Racine County prosecutor, could have relied upon Larsen as validating a prosecutor's good faith subjective intent to use evidence as a prerequisite for the prosecutor's required disclosure of some information. The analysis in the majority opinion is directly contrary to the analysis in Larsen and in another case, State v. Moriarty, 107 Wis. 2d 622, 321 N.W.2d 324 (Ct. App. 1982). [17] ¶ 111. More important, the majority opinion completely fails to explain the parallel language of subsection (1): intends to use, intends to call, and intends to offer. It is wholly unclear how the phrase plans to use could embody an objective standard if the other intent phrases in the subsection still embody a subjective standard. There ought to be consistency within the context of a subsection. ¶ 112. The inevitable implication of the majority opinion is that all paragraphs in the subsection embody an objective standard. [18] This opens the door to the mandatory disclosure of materials under paragraphs (b), (bm), (d), (e), and (g) in circumstances in which the material is never used and was never intended to be used as evidence. ¶ 113. To my mind, paragraphs (b), (bm), (d), (e), and (g) of subsection (1) contemplate a prosecutor's subjective intent. This subjective intent must not be tainted by bad faith. Circuit courts have the power to address a prosecutor's bad faith or manifest incompetence by excluding evidence or devising other remedies to protect the defendant. Wis. Stat. § 971.23(7m). But when a prosecutor seeks to use information that has not been timely disclosed because the prosecutor clearly did not intend to use it, the prosecutor should be permitted to explain and try to justify the shift in position, especially if the shift is responsive to some action or strategy of the defendant. ¶ 114. Most important, the majority opinion is impractical. It insists that a prosecutor turn over not only what the prosecutor knows and plans to use but also what a reasonable prosecutor should have known and would have planned to use if the reasonable prosecutor had known it existed. And it demands that these disclosures be made before trial. This soars beyond previous decisions and is too utopian to make sense in a busy prosecutor's office. It is a blueprint for second-guessing and attacking a prosecutor's conduct.