Court Opinion

ID: 9716504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:15.487152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.142424
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: This appeal required the court to decide what circumstances trigger the State’s duty to disclose to a criminal defendant information in its exclusive possession which is exculpatory or helpful to the defense. In Brady v. Maryland (1963), 373 U.S. 83, the Supreme Court held that “tire 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. Charles Jones admitted shooting the deceased, George Johnson. The only factual issue at trial was what happened immediately prior to the shooting. Two directly conflicting accounts were presented to the trial judge: defendant testified that he shot the deceased only after the deceased punched him in tire jaw and pulled a gun out of his belt; the version of the State’s two witnesses was that there was an argument, and the defendant and the deceased looked like they were about to fight, but no blows were struck, and no gun was drawn by the deceased. Dean was not called as a witness at trial but his testimony before tire grand jury corroborated defendant’s with respect to a fist fight occurring immediately prior to the shooting. Had Dean’s evidence been considered at trial, the trial judge might have been swayed on the issue of self-defense, or might have concluded that the deceased struck the defendant, and found defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. Thus, the materiality and favorable character of Deans testimony is clear (see People v. Nichols (1975), 27 Ill.App.3d 372, 385-386, 327 N.E.2d 186), and the majority does not dispute that these requirements of Brady were met. I dissent because I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the defendant’s request for production did not include Dean’s grand jury testimony. Even absent a request, the testimony was so material and favorable to the accused that the State had a duty to disclose it. I also disagree wih the majority’s view that the testimony was not suppressed. The majority reasons that the defendant’s request for “statements” of the State’s witnesses should not be construed to include grand jury testimony and, therefore, did not satisfy the Brady condition that the State’s obligation is to produce favorable evidence “upon request.” This reasoning does not give full play to the expectations of Brady expressed in classic language that a fair trial must be accorded those charged with crime: “Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted but when criminal trials are fair; our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly. An inscription on the walls of the Department of Justice states the proposition candidly for the federal domain: ‘The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts.’” (Brady v. Maryland (1963), 373 U.S. 83, 87.) As I view Brady and the cases developing it, the concept they champion is that due process requires the State to supply a defendant with any favorable evidence in its possession. To accomplish this purpose a request for production must be liberally construed and doubts resolved in favor of production; the State should not narrow the request by quibbling over the meaning of the language used or avoid production by technical interpretations of what the defendants seeks.1  To conclude that the defendant’s motion requesting “statements” did not implicitly constitute a request for all evidence inconsistent with the State’s theory of guilt, including grand jury testimony, reduces the truth-seeking adversary process to a contest the outcome of which depends on the relative skill of the players — the defense counsel and the prosecutor. The extent of constitutionally required disclosure is not dependent upon the proficiency with which counsel drafts his request. (United States v. Hibler (9th Cir. 1972), 463 F.2d 455, 459; Barbee v. Warden (4th Cir. 1964), 331 F.2d 842, 846.) In Hibler, the court said at page 459: “The test is whether the undisclosed evidence was so important that its absence prevented the accused from receiving his constitutionally-guaranteed fair trial. That defense counsel did not specifically request the information, that a ‘diligent’ defense attorney might have discovered tire information on his own with sufficient research, or that the prosecution did not suppress the evidence in bad faith, are not conclusive; due process can be denied by failure to disclose alone.” The observation of the court in Barbee at page 846 was: “In gauging the nondisclosure in terms of due process, the focus must be on the essential fairness of the procedure and not on the astuteness of either counsel.” Requiring defense counsel to have used words other than “statements” in his production request in order to reach Dean’s grand jury testimony elevates form over substance. The defendant’s right to be informed of Dean’s testimony should not turn upon his attorney’s ability to foresee that a man who was one of three witnesses chosen by the prosecution to testify before the grand jury, who was listed by the State as a prospective witness for the prosecution, who was a friend of and had been drinking with the deceased moments before his death, and who physically assaulted the defendant immediately prior to the shooting would give testimony that contradicted the prosecution’s theory of the crime and corroborated the testimony of the defendant.2  The majority observes that at the time defendant’s request for production was made grand jury testimony was available in Illinois only after the witness testified at trial. From this, the majority argues that the defendant’s request was not intended to include Dean’s grand jury testimony and the prosecutor and judge in interpreting the request could not be expected to anticipate that it did. By the same token, the fact that grand jury testimony was not generally available to defendants at that time excuses defense counsel from specifically requesting it since he could anticipate that such a request would be useless. However, the policy of the State with respect to the availability of grand jury testimony for discovery purposes when the defendant was tried does not excuse the State from its obligation under Brady to disclose information, regardless of the manner in which the State obtained it. The paramount concern is that justice be done; this necessarily implies that the defendant be given the opportunity to review all evidence in the State’s possession favorable to him regardless of whether his request specifically described it. The cases developing Brady have noted that the failure to make a request is not under all circumstances a waiver of the right to receive favorable material. These cases have held that due process is denied when hindsight demonstrates the existence of highly material undisclosed evidence that could have been put to considerable use by the defense; then, even the lack of a request does not excuse the prosecution from coming forward with it. (Evans v. Janing (8th Cir. 1973), 489 F.2d 470, 475; United States v. Hibler (9th Cir. 1972), 463 F.2d 455, 459; United States ex rel. Raymond v. Illinois (7th Cir. 1971), 455 F.2d 62, 66-67; United States v. Keogh (2d Cir. 1968), 391 F.2d 138, 147-48; Levin v. Katzenbach (D.C. Cir. 1966), 363 F.2d 287; Barbee v. Warden (4th Cir. 1964), 331 F.2d 842.) Since Dean’s grand jury testimony can be regarded as a “statement,” I construe the defendant’s request to cover it, but I would also hold that where evidence in the prosecution’s possession is so favorable and material as Dean’s grand jury testimony was in this case, a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial requires its disclosure even absent a request. The distinction drawn in Supreme Court Rule 412(a) and relied upon by the majority between “statements” of witnesses and grand jury testimony has nothing to do with a defendant’s right to a fair trial. This rule, which was not in existence when the defendant made his request, is directed to pretrial discovery in general and does not purport to deal with the prosecutor’s affirmative duty to disclose or the specificity with which a request must be made. Relying on Napue v. Illinois (1959), 360 U.S. 264, and Giglio v. United States (1972), 405 U.S. 150, the majority holds that the State did not suppress any evidence. The majority concludes that these cases teach only that a conviction should be set aside when the State wittingly or unwittingly allows false evidence to go uncorrected when it appears during trial. I do not construe Giglio so narrowly. I interpret that case to place upon a prosecutors office the obligation to ensure that information favorable to a defendant, once known by one prosecutor in a law enforcement office, will find its way into the hands of the defendant. The law becomes a feeble enforcer of the rights it recognizes when it acquiesces in the principle that a large prosecutors office is to be regarded as a fragmented activity in which each assistant is deaf, dumb and blind to evidence his coworkers have acquired in dealing with those who are accused, being investigated or indicted. Giglio, as I view it, holds that due process requires a general attribution of exculpatory knowledge possessed by any single member of the prosecution’s staff to the other members of the prosecutor’s office. (405 U.S. at 154.) To hold otherwise would reintroduce the good-faith-bad-faith distinction rejected in Bradij. Expediency, the burden or expense of disclosure, and the inconvenience of administering the prosecutor’s office in a way which facilitates disclosure do not lessen the State’s obligation to act with candor and fairness to those it prosecutes. “Suppression” as used in Brady and cases following it means not only hiding or secreting, but includes failure to disclose or nondisclosure. (Evans v. Janing (8th Cir. 1973), 489 F.2d 470; United States v. Hibler (9th Cir. 1972), 463 F.2d 455; United States ex rel. Raymond v. Illinois (7th Cir. 1971), 455 F.2d 62.) Testimony in a legally sanctioned proceeding such as before a grand jury cannot be regarded as for the ears of only the prosecutor in the grand jury room. The obligation to disclose the testimony in this case is not excused by the administrative difficulties which may confront a large prosecutor’s office in filtering information from the assistant who presented evidence to the grand jury through different assistants trying a case to the defendant’s counsel. The majority reasons that the assistant State’s attorney who obtained the indictment of the defendant was so overwhelmed by his duties of presenting a large number of cases to the grand jury that he could not be expected to know, understand or remember what he heard in the grand jury room. But, the assistant State’s attorney presents only one case at a time to the grand jury, and questions only one witness at a time. The assistant who presented the case to the grand jury was seeking an indictment for murder and knew the elements of that offense. In response to a question he asked Dean, he elicited information inconsistent with the guilt of the accused and the State’s theory of the crime. The importance of this evidence must have been manifest to a prosecutor whose sole assignment for several years was to process cases through the grand jury. To require under these circumstances that the grand jury prosecutor note the evidence and communicate his knowledge to the trial prosecutor, if only by a memorandum placed in the file, is not so burdensome a procedure as to outweigh the right of an accused to receive a fair trial. Other administrative solutions might include hiring additional State’s attorneys to relieve the grand jury prosecutor, if he is overworked, or instituting a procedure where the same assistant follows the case from the grand jury through to trial. The point, however, is that neither the heavy workload of the State’s Attorney’s office nor a system which fails to disclose favorable evidence produced before the grand jury excuses the obligation of the State under Brady, overrides a defendant’s constitutional rights or justifies a person being in prison who otherwise might not be. The majority also concludes that the trial prosecutor had no duty to take affirmative steps to ascertain tire nature of Dean’s grand jury testimony. This is irrelevant because under Giglio the failure of the State’s Attorney to provide the defendant with the favorable evidence of which tlie assistant who conducted the grand jury proceedings was aware was sufficient to deny the defendant due process. Whether recording and transcribing the grand jury testimony was a constitutional requirement and whether the practice in Cook County at the time was to record and transcribe such testimony are also irrelevant. The fact is that the grand jury testimony in this case was recorded and also transcribed, although it does not appear from the record when the transcription occurred. Even untranscribed stenographic notes in the possession of the comt reporter employed by the State to record grand jury testimony must be regarded as written material in the possession of the State’s Attorney. (People v. Gray (1972), 7 Ill.App.3d 526, 535, 288 N.E.2d 26; People v. Davis (1968), 103 Ill. App.2d 418, 244 N.E.2d 381.) Leaving grand jury testimony favorable to a defendant buried in a court reporter’s notes should not excuse failure to inform the defendant of such testimony since this provides too easy an escape from the disclosure requirement of Brady. I disagree also with the majority’s overly narrow reading of the defendant’s post-conviction petition. Attached to the petition is the affidavit of defense counsel alleging that the State did not provide notice of Dean’s favorable statement made before the grand jury. This satisfies me that the substance of Jones’ assertion is that he was unaware of Dean’s version of the occurrence, and this court should accept the substance of the petition rather than try to discover details which it may not have covered. Assuming the truth of the allegation, as we must on a motion to dismiss the petition, it is sufficient to estabhsli the deprivation of a substantial constitutional right. If the position of the State is that defense counsel had knowledge of Deans testimony prior to trial, it may raise that as a factual issue to be resolved at the post-conviction hearing. It should not be necessary, however, for the post-conviction petition to anticipate every possible detaü the State might raise at the evidentiary hearing on the petition. To conclude, as does the majority, that the defendant was afforded a faff trial even though he did not have the opportunity to present evidence which could conceivably have altered the outcome is inconsistent with the cases inspired by the idea expressed by Judge Simon E. Sobeloff when as Sohcitor General of the United States addressing the Judicial Conference of the Fourth Circuit on June 29, 1954 he said: “My client’s chief business is not to achieve victory but to establish justice.”   The usual criminal defendant is not on an equal footing with the State in his capacity to assemble evidence. In many instances at the time this defendant was tried an accused had no way of knowing the details of the evidence reposing in the State’s files or in the memory of its attorneys or investigators. This provides an additional reason for interpreting requests for statements liberally. See Wardius v. Oregon (1973), 412 U.S. 470, 475, n. 9, and Application of Kapatos (S.D.N.Y. 1962), 208 F.Supp. 883, 888. In Kapatos, Edmund L. Palmieri, a United States District judge, with long, varied and distinguished experience said: “The purpose of a trial is as much the acquittal of an innocent person as it is the conviction of a guilty one. The average accused usually does not have the manpower or resources available to the state in its investigation of the crime. Nor does he have access to all of the evidence, much of which has usually been removed or obliterated by the time he learns that he is to be tried for the crime.”    Barbee held that the State’s failure to produce the opinion of a ballistics expert that a gun produced in the courtroom was not the weapon used in the shooting involved in that case was error. The court said that defense counsel may have been misled into 'thinking that ballistics tests, if made, supported tire State’s theory and were adverse to his client, because otherwise the prosecution would not have produced the gun in court. Similarly, in this case defense counsel may have been misled into thinking that Dean, if called as a witness, would support the State’s version of "the incident, and that otherwise the prosecution would not have had him in the courtroom available to testify as a witness.