Court Opinion

ID: 9552177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:05:48.347061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:42.927331
License: Public Domain

HAYS, Justice,
dissenting.
I have no quarrel with the authorities cited by the majority opinion but I do question their application to the facts herein. In the closing days of the trial, the defendant took the stand. After some time on the witness stand, court was recessed until the next day. It was at this time the prosecutor sought an accident report. There was no such report for June 1, the date that defendant insisted the accident occurred. A further search for a report unearthed the June 2 report. This report contained no reference to the hitchhiker, so prominent in the defendant’s testimony, nor was there reference to marijuana.
The defendant argues that the accident report contained information as to the driver and passenger who would be potential witnesses. However, other witnesses who supposedly could also corroborate the fact of the accident were never called. From all this, the prosecutor reasonably concluded that this report did not apply to the wreck described by the defendant or that the report, which was easily available to defendant’s counsel, had been rejected for tactical reasons.
At the hearing on the Rule 32 motion, it became quite apparent that the two witnesses named in the accident report, if called at the trial, would have made a “liar” out of the defendant as to the amount of marijuana recovered at the scene of the accident. This was important to the defense. There had to be marijuana still available to support defendant’s story of an attempted sale to the victim.
At this post-conviction hearing, trial defense counsel himself testified that he probably wouldn’t have used the accident report witnesses if they had been available.
I do not find the failure to disclose the June 2 accident report to be a suppression of evidence “highly probative of innocence.” United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976).
*560In United States v. Agurs, supra, the Court said:
“The mere possibility that an item of undisclosed information might have helped the defense, or might have affected the outcome of the trial, does not establish ‘materiality’ in the constitutional sense.” 96 S.Ct. at 2400.
I dissent.