Also known as: favorable evidence to accused · exculpatory evidence · Brady material
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Evidence that tends to negate the defendant's guilt or reduce the punishment imposed. Due process may require its disclosure by the prosecution when material to guilt or punishment and may require its admission at trial when trustworthy and critical to a fair defense.
Eduardo Enriquez, held as an enemy combatant, learns of shipping logs discovered after his military commission that place him far from the alleged attack site. He seeks to introduce the logs in a habeas proceeding to contest the factual basis for his indefinite detention. The court must permit the challenge because the logs constitute evidence favorable to the accused that a meaningful substitute process must allow.
Eugene Ellsworth is charged with tampering with rebate applications. Prosecutors possess a forensics report showing that the suspicious logins occurred while Ellsworth was on approved leave and that password sharing was common in the unit. The report is never disclosed before Ellsworth pleads guilty. The plea must be set aside because the report is evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt.
Ethan Evans is prosecuted for staging fraudulent accidents. His co-defendant testifies that Evans initiated the scheme. Evans offers testimony from friends that the co-defendant repeatedly claimed to have masterminded the fraud and recruited Evans. The trial court excludes the statements as hearsay. Due process requires admission because the statements are trustworthy evidence favorable to the accused that is critical to a fair trial.
Ella Emerson is charged with assault after a bar fight. She seeks to introduce evidence that she was involuntarily intoxicated and therefore lacked the required mental state. The trial court applies a state rule barring voluntary intoxication evidence. The exclusion prevents Emerson from presenting evidence favorable to the accused on the element of mens rea.
On July 12, 1992, respondent James Egelhoff was camping in the Yaak region of northwestern Montana with Roberta Pavola and John Christenson to pick mushrooms. The three sold the mushrooms they had collected and spent the rest of the day and evening drinking in bars and at a private party in Troy, Montana. After leaving the party after 9 p.m. in Christenson's 1974 Ford Galaxy station wagon, the drinking continued, as Egelhoff was seen buying beer at 9:20 p.m. and recalled passing a bottle of Black Velvet with Christenson. Around midnight, officers of the Lincoln County sheriff's department discovered the station wagon stuck in a ditch along U.S. Highway 2. Pavola and Christenson were in the front seat, each dead from a single gunshot to the head. Egelhoff lay in the rear of the car, alive and yelling obscenities, with a blood-alcohol content of .36 percent measured over an hour later. His .38-caliber handgun lay on the floor near the brake pedal with four loaded rounds and two empty casings, and he had gunshot residue on his hands. Egelhoff was charged with two counts of deliberate homicide under Montana law requiring that he purposely or knowingly caused the deaths of another human being. At trial he claimed an unidentified fourth person must have committed the murders, that his extreme intoxication rendered him physically incapable of committing them, and that it accounted for his inability to recall the events. The trial court instructed the jury pursuant to Mont. Code Ann. § 45-2-203 that it could not consider respondent's intoxicated condition in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense. The jury found Egelhoff guilty on both counts and the court sentenced him to 84 years' imprisonment. The Supreme Court of Montana reversed the convictions. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseEdith Eberhardt is charged with possessing drugs found in a car she was driving. The court instructs the jury that it may presume possession from presence in the vehicle. Eberhardt offers evidence that other occupants admitted ownership of the drugs. The presumption instruction risks convicting her despite evidence favorable to the accused that rebuts the inference.
In March 1973, three adult male respondents and a sixteen-year-old girl were traveling in a Chevrolet on the New York State Thruway when the car was stopped for speeding. Police observed two loaded handguns weighing approximately six pounds in an open handbag on the front floor or seat beside the girl, who admitted the bag belonged to her. A machinegun and heroin were discovered in the trunk after it was pried open. The four were tried together in Ulster County Court for possession of the handguns and trunk items. The trial judge instructed the jury regarding the statutory presumption that the presence of firearms in the automobile constituted evidence of possession by all occupants. The jury found the three adult males guilty of handgun possession but acquitted everyone of the trunk charges. The convictions were affirmed by the Appellate Division without opinion. The New York Court of Appeals also affirmed. The respondents sought federal habeas corpus relief in the Southern District of New York. The district court granted the writ on the ground that the presumption could not support the convictions on these facts. The Second Circuit affirmed the grant of the writ, though on the basis that the statute was unconstitutional on its face. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the procedural and substantive issues raised by the lower federal courts' decisions.
View caseEwan Eckhart is convicted of murder on the basis of eyewitness testimony. Years later he obtains affidavits from two witnesses who were never interviewed and who place another person at the scene with the weapon. Eckhart seeks habeas relief on the ground that the affidavits constitute evidence favorable to the accused that was never disclosed or considered.
In late September 1981, the body of Texas Department of Public Safety Officer David Rucker was found beside his patrol car on a highway near Los Fresnos, Texas. At about the same time, Los Fresnos Police Officer Enrique Carrisalez stopped a speeding vehicle and was shot by the driver, dying nine days later. Petitioner Leonel Torres Herrera was arrested a few days after the shootings and charged with the capital murders of both officers. He was tried in January 1982, convicted of Carrisalez's capital murder, and sentenced to death; he pleaded guilty to Rucker's murder in July 1982. At Herrera's trial for Carrisalez's murder, eyewitness Enrique Hernandez identified him as the shooter from the patrol car. A declaration by the dying Carrisalez to the same effect was admitted. The speeding car was registered to Herrera's live-in girlfriend, and Herrera had keys to it in his pocket when arrested. Herrera's Social Security card was found at Rucker's scene. Blood spatters of type A, matching Rucker but not Herrera's type O, were found on the car and on Herrera's jeans and wallet. A handwritten letter found on Herrera when arrested strongly implied he had killed Rucker. Herrera's conviction was affirmed on direct appeal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1984, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. His state habeas application was denied. A federal habeas petition challenging the identifications was denied by the Fifth Circuit in 1990, with certiorari denied by the Supreme Court. In 1990, Herrera filed a second state habeas petition raising a claim of actual innocence supported by affidavits from attorney Hector Villarreal and former cellmate Juan Franco Palacious, both stating that Herrera's brother Raul Herrera Sr., who died in 1984, had confessed to committing the murders. The state courts denied relief. In February 1992, Herrera filed his second federal habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, presenting those affidavits plus additional ones from Raul Herrera Jr. and Jose Ybarra Jr. claiming Raul Sr. had confessed and that Raul Jr. had witnessed the shootings. The District Court dismissed most claims as an abuse of the writ but granted a stay of execution to permit Herrera to present his actual innocence claim in state court. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the stay, holding that a claim of actual innocence without an accompanying constitutional violation is not cognizable on federal habeas corpus. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View caseNo. The duty exists even without a request when the evidence is material to guilt or punishment. Suppression, whether intentional or inadvertent, violates due process.
A court must admit trustworthy hearsay that is critical to the defense when rigid application of the hearsay rule would deprive the defendant of a fair trial.
No. The obligation applies at trial. A convicted defendant has no freestanding due process right to post-conviction discovery of exculpatory evidence.
No. There is no general constitutional duty to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury. An indictment may stand unless the failure violates a specific constitutional or procedural requirement.