Opinion ID: 2329763
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brady Material

Text: Appellant Donald Coleman asserts that the information in the paragraph constitutes Brady material because it could have been used to impeach McCain's credibility. In Brady, the Supreme Court announced a general rule by which the due process implications of a prosecutor's nondisclosure of material evidence favorable to a defendant should be measured: [T]he suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution. 373 U.S. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196. In United States v. Bagley, ___ U.S. ___, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985), the Supreme Court clarified several aspects of the Brady rule. The issue in Bagley concerned the standard of materiality applicable in determining whether a conviction should be reversed because the prosecutor had failed to disclose requested evidence that could have been used to impeach government witnesses. Id. at 3377. The court reiterated that impeachment evidence, as well as exculpatory evidence, falls within the Brady rule. Id. at 3380. Such evidence is `evidence favorable to an accused,' Brady, 373 U.S. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196, . . . so that, if disclosed and used effectively, it may make the difference between conviction and acquittal. Id. But, to justify a reversal, the withheld evidence must be material in the sense that its suppression undermines confidence in the outcome of the trial. Id. at 3381. In fashioning a standard of materiality, the Bagley plurality opinion modified the no request, general request, specific request refinement of Brady developed in United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). The court held in Bagley that the following standard, drawn from Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (criteria for judging ineffective assistance of counsel), is sufficiently flexible to cover all three situations of prosecutorial failure to disclose evidence favorable to the accused: The evidence is material only if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. Bagley, 105 S.Ct. at 3384. Brady, Agurs, and now Bagley call for retrospective evaluations, i.e., decisions as to whether a defendant's due process rights had been violated by the government's withholding of particular evidence. Lewis v. United States, 408 A.2d 303, 306 (D.C.1979); Wiggins v. United States, 386 A.2d 1171, 1174 (D.C.1978). In this case, appellant asserts that, because McCain testified at trial that Donald Coleman had a gun, the defense could have impeached McCain by showing that his first statement to the police did not mention a gun. Coleman also argues that the reference in the paragraph to McCain's assisting Bowman is irreconcilable with McCain's trial testimony. Because McCain stated at trial that he did not lie to the police, appellant asserts that the foregoing omissions and inconsistencies in the paragraph prove he either lied to police or lied to the jury. Finally, because the credibility of McCain was crucial, appellant maintains there is a reasonable probability that such impeachment would have affected the outcome of the trial. We conclude that, despite some arguable inconsistencies between McCain's in-court testimony and the paragraph in Officer Wright's witness statement report, such inconsistencies were not material, as that concept is to be understood from Bagley. That is to say, we cannot conclude with reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense and used by the defense to impeach McCain, the result of the proceeding would have been different. Bagley, 105 S.Ct. at 3384. We consider, first, the gun. `[A] failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of the fact' and constitutes a `prima facie' inconsistency. Hill v. United States, 404 A.2d 525, 531 (D.C.1979) (per curiam), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1085, 100 S.Ct. 1042, 62 L.Ed.2d 770 (1980) (quoting 3 A. WIGMORE, EVIDENCE § 1042 (Chadbourne Rev.1970)). Under this standard, the absence of a reference in the paragraph to a gun is hardly an inconsistency. Officer Wright's conversation with McCain occurred at Claiborne's apartment under hectic conditions and was not a comprehensive interview. Therefore, as the trial court noted, the paragraph could not have been intended as a detailed account; obviously, it lacks many of the crucial facts related at trial. For example, none of McCain's statements summarized by Officer Wright refers to one assailant's possessing a poker or ice pick, or to the stabbing of Bowman with such an instrument  a far more significant fact than the other assailant's holding a gun. Moreover, McCain's statement to Wright that he had assisted Bowman is not irreconcilable with his trial testimony. The paragraph reveals that Bowman broke away from his assailants and ran toward McCain, soliciting help. McCain then grabbed Bowman momentarily to assist him before Bowman broke loose and ran in the direction of Claiborne's apartment. McCain then looked back and saw the assailants running. In comparison, at trial McCain testified that Bowman, while the two Colemans stared at McCain, managed to rise, run towards [McCain], and then run into an alley. McCain then back[ed] off, ran, and, when he looked back, saw the Colemans running in the same direction as Bowman. The only difference between the two accounts is that, at trial, McCain did not mention momentarily assisting Bowman. McCain's trial testimony, however, is not irreconcilable with the rendering of such assistance. McCain could still have grabbed Bowman momentarily as Bowman ran toward him. Such a difference constitutes merely an omission from McCain's trial testimony, not an inconsistency. In any event, the momentary assistance was a collateral matter that did not relate to McCain's testimony that the Colemans stabbed and robbed Bowman. In sum, the omission of a reference to a gun in Wright's summary of McCain's first statement and the omission in McCain's trial testimony of any reference to helping Bowman, as McCain apparently had told Officer Wright, do not necessarily constitute lies either to the police or to the jury. In hindsight, we cannot say there is a reasonable probability that, had Wright's witness statement been disclosed to the defense earlier  thereby allowing counsel to cross-examine McCain with it  the result of the proceeding would have been different. As the trial court noted, appellants' counsel had cross-examined McCain extensively (over 115 transcript pages) on a variety of matters relating to his credibility. It is unreasonable to believe that the additional benefit afforded by impeachment on these issues would have affected the result.