Opinion ID: 1426052
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Duty of police officers to disclose

Text: The second argument that the ISP Officials press is that the Brady duty does not extend to police officers, or at most, it requires only that they disclose evidence to prosecutors. From this, they reason that police officers can never be liable under § 1983 for a failure to disclose. The most obvious flaw in this argument is the fact that Steidl's complaint alleges that the ISP Officials indeed did fail to disclose the exculpatory evidence to, among others, the judges, juries, post trial prosecutors, and the Governor and his staff. (Emphasis added.) Steidl did not allege that the ISP Officials had a direct duty to disclose the evidence to his attorney. Rather, consistently with the defense theory, he alleged in effect that the ISP Officials failed in their duty to disclose the evidence to a competent authority. See Brady v. Dill, 187 F.3d 104, 114 (1st Cir.1999) (holding that police officers have a duty to report exculpatory evidence to a competent authority). As the Third Circuit recognized in Gibson, the case on which the defendants rely so heavily, Several circuits have recognized that police officers and other state actors may be liable under § 1983 for failing to disclose exculpatory information to the prosecutor. . . . We agree. Although Brady places the ultimate duty of disclosure on the prosecutor, it would be anomalous to say that police officers are not liable when they affirmatively conceal material evidence from the prosecutor. 411 F.3d at 443. The Supreme Court considers it so well established that the duty to disclose is one held by the state or government as a whole that its most recent comment occurs in a short per curiam opinion. See Youngblood v. West Virginia, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 2188, 165 L.Ed.2d 269 (2006). In Youngblood, a criminal defendant alleged a Brady violation after a police investigator instructed another person to discard potentially exculpatory evidence without disclosing it. Id. at 2189. Stating that [a] Brady violation occurs when the government fails to disclose evidence materially favorable to the accused . . . even evidence that is known only to police investigators and not to the prosecutor, id. at 2190 (emphasis added), the Court held that Youngblood clearly presented a federal constitutional Brady claim. Id. at 2190. Even before Youngblood, this court reached a similar conclusion. In Newsome, we had this to say: we make the normal immunity inquiry: was it clearly established in 1979 and 1980 that police could not withhold from prosecutors exculpatory information about fingerprints and the conduct of a lineup? The answer is yes: The Brady principle was announced in 1963, and we applied it in Jones [ v. Chicago, 856 F.2d 985 (7th Cir.1988)] to affirm a hefty award of damages against officers who withheld exculpatory information in 1981. 256 F.3d at 752-53 (citations omitted). Newsome also explained that [i]f officers are not candid with prosecutors, then the prosecutors' decisions . . . are not the important locus of action. Pressure must be brought to bear elsewhere. . . . Requiring culpable officers to pay damages to the victims of their actions . . . holds out promise of both deterring and remediating violations of the Constitution. Newsome, 256 F.3d at 752. Newsome therefore held that police officers who withhold evidence cannot hide from liability behind the fact that the prosecutor [withheld the evidence, so] . . . they either are not liable or possess a derivative form of immunity. Id. Other circuits agree with this general analysis of the issue. Thus, in Brady v. Dill , the First Circuit held that while the officers before it were entitled to qualified immunity, an officer's fail[ure] to apprise the prosecutor or a judicial officer of known exculpatory information [can be a] . . . constitutional wrong . . . [especially] when a police officer acts as an information provider. 187 F.3d at 114. To similar effect, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that [i]nvestigators satisfy their obligations under Brady when they turn exculpatory and impeachment evidence over to the prosecutor, necessarily implying that Brady applies to investigators. McMillian v. Johnson, 88 F.3d 1554, 1567 (11th Cir.1996). The lone case that the ISP Officials cite in support of the idea that police officers violate due process  only if they deliberately withhold or conceal exculpatory evidence from the prosecutor is the Northern District of Illinois decision in Newsome v. James, 2001 WL 1242889, , 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16888, -14. Aside from the fact that district court decisions are nonprecedential, the court appears to have been focusing on the presumed inability of police officers to make sophisticated legal decisions about materiality. It also said, interestingly, that the police officers simply have to refrain from concealing exculpatory evidence. Id. That, of course, is precisely what the ISP Officials here did not do. We therefore do not find anything in the district court's Newsome opinion that would persuade us to reconsider our own conclusion, directed by the precedent of the Supreme Court, our own court, and other circuit courts. Police officers have a duty to disclose under Brady. Our opinion in Jones v. Chicago, supra, supports this conclusion. There we held that supervisors may be liable for their subordinates' violation of others' constitutional rights when they know about the conduct and facilitate it, approve it, condone it, or turn a blind eye for fear of what they might see. They must in other words act either knowingly or with deliberate, reckless indifference. 856 F.2d at 992-93. As the court described the case, [t]here was . . . enough evidence to enable the jury to infer that [the defendants] had known every false step taken by the subordinate officers, had approved every false step, and had done their part to make the scheme work, as one supervisor deep-six[ed] a subordinate's report, another tried to put [a subordinate] off the scent and another sign[ed] a deceitful report for use by the prosecution. Id. We too are faced with a scenario in which supervisors perpetuated other officers' misconduct. We conclude, therefore, that Steidl has satisfied step one of the Saucier inquiry, because he has alleged facts that, if true, show a constitutional violation on the part of the ISP Officials.