Court Opinion

ID: 9464726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:41:07.446667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:47.224203
License: Public Domain

SEITZ, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of the court because I believe United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976) so dictates. I write to express a concern arising primarily from the failure of the prosecution to timely disclose the fact that a secret service agent had theretofore interceded on behalf of the prosecution witness, Bogdanski, in a pending state criminal prosecution. Such information was clearly relevant to the jury’s credibility evaluation of Bogdanski.
If at all possible, a defendant and the courts should not be required to confront the issues here involved in the context of a § 2255 proceeding wherein the defendant bears the burden of demonstrating that the omitted evidence creates a reasonable doubt that did not otherwise exist. In my view, a prosecutor’s timely disclosure obligation with respect to this type of material cannot be overemphasized if due process is to be afforded a defendant at the trial. A post trial resolution of such an • issue by the district court unnecessarily and needlessly requires the court to impinge on a function which should have been performed by the fact-finder at the trial.