Court Opinion

ID: 9444582
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:05:31.538958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:55.417626
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
This concurrence expresses an additional thought about the problem of this case rather than any disagreement with the reasoning of the court. My concern is that no unduly broad implications be read into this decision.
The matter in controversy is the extent of the duty of public officers charged with the investigation and prosecution of crime when they discover conflicting evidence on a material point. The government and the court below seem to have believed that once the prosecutor, having examined all of the available evidence, is convinced that the truth of an issue lies on one side he is relieved of any obligation to disclose the existence of evidence which in some degree supports what he believes would be a false conclusion. However, it seems to me that it is not possible to lay down a rule of thumb for such situations. It can be said that the prosecutor must not act in an essentially unfair way. But this is an area in which the question of fundamental fairness depends so much upon the facts of the particular case that a precise rule can not be devised.
It seems likely that many situations will arise in which a prosecutor can fairly keep to himself his knowledge of available testimony which he views as mistaken or false. But there are other circumstances in which a prosecutor must, or certainly should know that even testimony which he honestly disbelieves is of a type or from a source which in all probability would make it very persuasive to a fair minded jury. This is notably true of testimony of a police officer, and most certainly of an arresting officer, favorable to a contention of the accused person. Here the prosecutor not only kept quiet about the existence of such testimony, but, as Judge McLaughlin points out, even stated in open court that other police officers if called “would corroborate what already has been testified to.” Thus, the wrong of nondisclosure of obviously significant testimony was compounded by a misleading affirmative statement as to the nature of the available but unused testimony.
In brief, it is not every case in which the prosecution must reveal the availability of testimony inconsistent with the government’s contentions. But in special circumstances such nondisclosure may, and here it certainly does, amount to fundamental unfairness in the trial of a criminal case.