Court Opinion

ID: 9642253
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:53:01.282454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:45.220916
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
It may very well be that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ruling as it did on motion for discovery. However, the standard utilized by the majority for determining materiality of the medical records requested is not the correct one. And in that respect the analysis by a majority of the Court in Quinones v. State, 592 S.W.2d 933, 940-941 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) is similarly flawed.
When an accused requests disclosure through a motion for discovery, those who apply the “materiality” test of Agurs simply ignore precisely what the Supreme Court announced at the outset it was about to decide, viz:
“The question before us is whether the prosecutor’s failure to provide defense with certain background information about Sewell [the deceased], which would have tended to support the argument that respondent acted in self-defense, deprived her of a fair trial under the rule of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215.
The answers to the question depends on (1) a review of the facts, (2) the significance of the failure of defense counsel to *428request the material, and (3) the standard by which the prosecutor’s failure to volunteer exculpatory material should be judged.”1
United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 98-99, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 2395, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976).
Then, after reviewing procedural background of the cause, the Supreme Court points out that the rule of Brady v. Maryland, supra, “arguably applies in three quite different situations.” The first is knowing use of perjured testimony by the prosecution, typified by Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 55 S.Ct. 340, 79 L.Ed. 791 (1935). The second is illustrated by Brady v. Maryland, itself, and “is characterized by a pretrial request for specific evidence,” Agurs, supra, 427 U.S. at 104, 96 S.Ct. at 2398. The third situation, “typified by this case, therefore embraces the case in which only a general request for ‘Brady material’ has been made,” id., at 107, 96 S.Ct. at 2399.
Along the way to reaching the question of whether the prosecutor “has any constitutional duty to volunteer exculpatory matter to the defense, and if so, what standard of materiality gives rise to that duty,”2 ibid., the Supreme Court observed that “[t]he test of materiality in a case like Brady in which specific information has been requested by the defense is not necessarily the same as in a case in which no request has been made,” and noted that it “has not yet decided whether the prosecution has any obligation to provide defense counsel with exculpatory information when no request has been made.”
When the question was reached, the Supreme Court answered it in Part III of its opinion, from which the test of materiality is drawn by the majority in the case at bar. But, as the Supreme Court itself made abundantly plain, that test is reserved for the “third situation” it described. What is before us now is not any aspect of a “constitutional duty to volunteer exculpatory matter to the defense," but a simple motion for discovery of known and readily available medical records.
As the Agurs opinion points out where there is a specific request, although there is no duty to provide defense counsel with unlimited discovery of everything known by the prosecutor, Brady means that constitutionally
“if the subject matter of such a request is material, or indeed if a substantial basis for claiming materiality exists, it. is reasonable to require the prosecutor to respond either by furnishing the information or by submitting the problem to the trial judge. When the prosecutor receives a specific and relevant request, the failure to make any response is seldom, if ever, excusable.”
Agurs, U.S. at 106, 96 S.Ct. at 2399.
In sum, a constitutional test of “materiality" should not be applied to a statutorily authorized motion for discovery specifying existing records, but if the majority insists on doing so it should at least apply the correct standard in such “second situation” — Brady v. Maryland, itself.
I respectfully dissent.
ONION, P.J., and MILLER, J., join.

. All emphasis is supplied by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicated.

. The Agurs opinion takes pains to emphasize that it was not considering “the scope of discovery” under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, but was dealing only with the due process right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Constitution. Conversely, here there is no need to address the constitutional duty for appellant invoked the statutory discovery procedure of Article 39.14, V.A.C.C.P. which surely provides a broader scope of discovery upon request than duty to disclose when only a general request, or none at all, has been made.