Court Opinion

ID: 9496168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:19:11.22075+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:23.815757
License: Public Domain

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I am pleased to join Chief Judge Boud-in’s opinion for the en banc court, including the decision to remand Ellsworth’s Brady claim to the district court for an evidentiary hearing. Having concluded in my earlier dissent from the panel decision, now withdrawn, that Ellsworth had failed to establish a Brady violation, I wish to explain briefly my concurrence in the court’s decision to remand the Brady claim for further consideration.
Relying on our previous decision in United States v. Ranney, 719 F.2d 1183 (1st Cir.1983), I had concluded that the evidence disclosed in Jan Smith’s intake note failed Brady’s materiality requirement because almost all of the withheld *9evidence would have been inadmissible at trial. See id. at 1190 (“Inadmissible evidence is by definition not material, because it never would have reached the jury and therefore could not have affected the trial outcome.”); see also United States v. Hemmer, 729 F.2d 10, 16 n.3 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1218, 104 S.Ct. 2666, 81 L.Ed.2d 371 (1984). Today the en banc court has ruled, in conformity with a majority of the circuits, that the petitioner can also establish a viable Brady claim by demonstrating that withheld evidence, though itself inadmissible, would have led directly to the discovery of material admissible evidence. Under this sensible rule, Ellsworth is entitled to an evidentiary hearing where he will have the opportunity to establish that information in the withheld intake note would have led the defense to other material exculpatory evidence.
I also concluded, on the basis of the present record, that Ellsworth either had or should have had independent knowledge of the intake note prior to trial. See United States v. Diaz, 922 F.2d 998, 1007 (2d Cir.1990) (“Evidence is not ‘suppressed’ [within the meaning of Brady ] if the defendant either knew, or should have known of the essential facts permitting him to take advantage of any exculpatory evidence.”). Of necessity, I drew inferences from a record which never addressed directly Ellsworth’s awareness of the intake note. In its supplemental brief to the en banc court, the state has asserted vigorously that Ellsworth knew or should have known of the intake note prior to his trial. Assuming the state maintains this position on remand, the en banc court has also directed the district court to further investigate at the evidentiary hearing the nature and timing of Ellsworth’s knowledge of the intake note. This issue is a critical element of Ellsworth’s Brady claim, and I agree that it warrants additional treatment by the district court.