Opinion ID: 741804
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Withholding of Material Evidence

Text: 19 Defendants claim that the government withheld documentary evidence material to the issue of their guilt, violating Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Under Brady, the government's suppression of material, exculpatory evidence violates due process. Id. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196-97. To establish a Brady violation, a defendant must show that: (1) the prosecution suppressed evidence; (2) the evidence was favorable to the defendant; and (3) the evidence was material. United States v. Willis, 89 F.3d 1371, 1381 (8th Cir.1996). Evidence is material for Brady purposes if its cumulative effect would be to undermine confidence in the verdict. Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, ----, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 1566, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995). Impeachment evidence may also come within Brady. United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 676, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3380, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985). Prior to trial, defendants made a variety of motions seeking to compel production of certain materials, and unsuccessfully moved to dismiss the indictments for the government's alleged failures to produce evidence. 20 The government admits that it refused to produce one of these documents: the personnel file of William Hawthorne, the OTS agent who supervised the bank. The government maintains, however, that it withheld the file only after it had examined the file and determined that it contained no Brady material. It is the prosecutor's duty to examine documents to determine whether they contain Brady material. United States v. Pou, 953 F.2d 363, 366 (8th Cir.1992). Despite the government's representations, defendants assert that the file may have contained impeaching information or evidence of OTS's knowledge of the events in question. Mere speculation that materials may contain exculpatory evidence is not, however, sufficient to sustain a Brady claim. United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 109-10, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 2400-01, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). Furthermore, when the government has reviewed a personnel file for Brady material, the defendant's speculation that the file may contain impeaching information does not compel the district court to review the file in camera. Pou, 953 F.2d at 367. Here, the district court's denial of the defendants' motion to compel production of Hawthorne's file was essentially a discovery ruling, and absent a colorable showing that the file in fact contained Brady material or that the government acted in bad faith, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion. See Willis, 89 F.3d at 1381 n. 6. 21 Other documents in dispute include an RTC asset valuation review (AVR) of the FWMC loans prepared by RTC agent Jones, various materials regarding the FWMC loans, agency investigative notes and telephone logs, correspondence, and other records. Defendants assert that these documents would have been material in impeaching government witnesses, in demonstrating that OTS and RTC were fully aware of the transactions in issue, and in demonstrating that the sale of the FWMC loans and the charged-off loans was proper. The government contends that it made available all material that was in its possession or controlled by OTS and RTC. There is evidence that at least some information the defense failed to find in the agency files did, in fact, exist at some point. 4 It is much less clear whether other requested documents, such as Van Brocklin's correspondence and agency files on the FWMC loans, were actually retained by the agencies. The upshot is that, for much of the material sought by the defense, we face an impasse: the defendants say that exculpatory material was missing from the files it examined, while the government maintains that the defense had access to everything, and that any missing material simply does not exist. 22 This discrepancy is troubling, but it does not give rise to a Brady violation. Defendants' belief that certain documents were missing from the files they examined does not, without more, establish that the government has actually suppressed those purported documents. Even for those documents that probably did exist, the record does not indicate that the absence was due to the prosecution. In determining whether a Brady violation has occurred when the government has lost or destroyed evidence, courts face the treacherous task of divining the import of materials whose contents are unknown and, very often, disputed. California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479, 486, 104 S.Ct. 2528, 2533, 81 L.Ed.2d 413 (1984). Here, our task is even more difficult, as we cannot be sure whether or not much of the material in dispute was ever in the government's possession. 23 Nevertheless, we have carefully reviewed the appellants' arguments for why the disputed material constituted Brady material. Even if we were to accept defendants' representations of the content of the material they sought, and assume that the material was in fact retained by the government, we conclude that defendants have not shown that material was either favorable to the defense or that it was material in that its collective effect would undermine confidence in the verdicts. We therefore hold that the defendants have failed to establish any of the three elements that show a Brady violation. 5