Court Opinion

ID: 9712783
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:59:56.600996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:14.356427
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE ROMITI, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. Defendant’s conviction was based on his identification by two eyewitnesses: Tom Hall, who was the victim of the robbery, and Georgia Bowling, a passer-by who identified defendant at trial as one of the two men she saw fleeing the scene. Yet the State failed to disclose that two days after the robbery Bowling had failed to identify the defendant in a lineup and had misidentified a police officer as one of the men she had seen after the robbery. Was this evidence material and did its nondisclosure prejudice the defendant? On three separate occasions during jury deliberations the jury sent to the trial judge questions concerning Bowling’s testimony. Two of those questions specifically related to the issue of whether Bowling had previously identified the defendant in a lineup. Indeed, it is clear from one of those questions that some of the jurors mistakenly believed that Bowling had testified that she had previously identified the defendant in a lineup. Under these circumstances, where the State failed to disclose evidence which was favorable to the defendant and which specifically related to key identification testimony on which the jury focused its attention, I find the materiality of the evidence and the prejudice arising from its nondisclosure to be apparent. Accordingly, I would reverse defendant’s conviction and remand for a new trial.