Court Opinion

ID: 9490952
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:59:52.4367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:25.660775
License: Public Domain

PETITION FOR REHEARING
April 23, 1998
Petition for rehearing of opinion filed January 30,1998. Petition denied.

Per Curiam:

Although the government prevailed on appeal in this case, it has filed a petition for rehearing because it believes “language in the Court’s opinion goes beyond what is necessary to resolve the case and seemingly imposes far-reaching new constitutional obligations on the government.” (Government Petition for Rehearing at 2.) In moving for rehearing, the government argues for the first time that it has no obligation to produce Brady or Giglio material prior to the entry of a guilty plea.
While we emphasize that our opinion does not impose new constitutional obligations of any sort, we deny the government’s petition. First, the argument was not previously presented to this Court. Rather, the government’s brief on appeal acknowledged that a prosecutor’s duty to disclose encompasses both exculpatory evidence as well as evidence that may be used to impeach a witness, and that the duty to disclose applies “[i]n the context of a guilty plea.” (Government brief on appeal at 25 (citing Tate v. Wood, 963 F.2d 20, 25 (2d Cir.1992); Miller v. Angliker, 848 F.2d 1312, 1320 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 890, 109 S.Ct. 224, 102 L.Ed.2d 214 (1988)).)
Second, the argument goes too far. Although, as the government argues, guilty pleas are entered in many cases even before discovery is produced, in some cases a guilty plea is not entered until after the government’s duty to disclose arises. In this case, for example, the district court ordered the government to produce certain Giglio materials in advance of trial. Hence, the government' had a duty to disclose the impeachment evidence and it was obliged to do so. When the government is obliged to produce Giglio materials, its failure to do so may be a basis for vacating the guilty plea if the withheld evidence was “material.”
We express no view regarding when the government’s obligation to disclose Giglio material might arise in other cases. In this case we affirmed the district court’s decision not to vacate the guilty plea because the undisclosed impeachment evidence was not “material.” The issue of the timing of the government’s obligation to disclose the impeachment materials was not before us. We did not purport to change existing law as to when the government must disclose Brady and Giglio materials, and the government remains free to address the timing issue in a future ease in which it fails to disclose evidence that is material in the Brady sense.
The petition for rehearing is denied.