Opinion ID: 199406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Conley's Motion for a New Trial

Text: 33 Conley moved for a new trial on March 24, 2000. 2 In support of his motion, Conley pointed to three pieces of newly discovered evidence. First, he asserted that Bullard's testimony in the civil trial supported Conley's version of events. Bullard had testified similarly before the grand jury, Conley contended, and the government's failure to disclose this violated its Brady obligations. 3 Second, Conley argued that the government knowingly relied on perjured testimony when it allowed to go uncorrected, and used in its closing, Brown's statements that the Boston police had brought state drug charges against him in retaliation for his cooperation with the federal government. Third, Conley argued that the government wrongly failed to disclose the transcript of an interview conducted by the Internal Affairs Division (IAD) of the Boston Police Department in which Walker made a tentative photo identification of the tall white officer who chased and arrested Brown as an officer other than Conley. 4 34 After oral argument on Conley's motion for a new trial, the district court ordered the government to produce, in camera, all of the IAD files in its possession related to this case. The previously undisclosed material in those files included newspaper articles detailing how Cox initially had no recollection of how he had been beaten; officer activity logs indicating that Conley's report was more detailed than the reports of other officers present at the incident; booking sheets indicating that Brown was not the only suspect wearing a brown jacket the night of the incident and that another suspect was dressed similarly to Cox; motor vehicle inspection reports; internal memoranda; an interview with Bullard in which he stated that Cox may have been found on the ice behind the Lexus instead of behind the marked cruiser (as the prosecution contended at trial); a report by Walker; and a diagram of the car chase apparently prepared by Walker. The government also produced in camera an internal FBI memorandum documenting that Walker had initially agreed, then refused, to take a polygraph examination concerning his retraction of an earlier statement he had made to the IAD that he had seen someone trailing Cox as he chased Brown. 5 It appears that no evidentiary hearing followed the in camera production of this evidence.