''Brady v. Maryland'', 373 U.S. 83 (1963), was a landmark

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case that established that the

prosecution A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...

must turn over all

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

that might exonerate the defendant (

exculpatory evidence Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to present guilt. In many countries, including ...

) to the defense.''Criminal Law: Cases and Materials'', 7th ed.
2012,

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; John Kaplan,

Robert Weisberg Robert I. Weisberg is an American lawyer. He is an Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as a leading scholar in the law and literature movement. Weisberg wa ...

, Guyora Binder, The prosecution failed to do so for Brady, and he was convicted. Brady challenged his conviction, arguing it had been contrary to the

Due Process Clause In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as ...

of the

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and e ...

Background

On June 27, 1958, 25-year-old Maryland man John Leo Brady and 24-year-old companion Charles Donald Boblit murdered 53-year-old acquaintance William Brooks. Both men were convicted and sentenced to death. Brady admitted to being involved in the murder, but he claimed that Boblit had done the actual killing and that they had stolen Brooks' car ahead of a planned bank robbery but had not planned to kill him. The prosecution had withheld a written statement by Boblit (the men were tried separately), confessing that he had committed the act of killing by himself. The

Maryland Court of Appeals The Supreme Court of Maryland is the highest court of the U.S. state of Maryland. Its name was changed on December 14, 2022, from the Maryland Court of Appeals, after a voter-approved change to the state constitution. The court, which is compos ...

had affirmed the conviction and remanded the case for a retrial only on the question of punishment. Brady's lawyer, E. Clinton Bamberger Jr., appealed the case to the Supreme Court, hoping for a new trial.

Decision

The Supreme Court held that withholding

violates due process "where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment." The Court determined that under Maryland law, the withheld evidence could not have exculpated the defendant but was material to his level of punishment. Thus, the Maryland Court of Appeals' ruling was affirmed – Brady would receive a new sentencing hearing but not a new trial.

William O. Douglas William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views, and is often ...

wrote: "We now hold that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment... Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted, but when criminal trials are fair." A defendant's request for " Brady disclosure" refers to the holding of the ''Brady'' case, and the numerous state and federal cases that interpret its requirement that the prosecution disclose material exculpatory evidence to the defense. Exculpatory evidence is "material" if "there is a reasonable probability that his conviction or sentence would have been different had these materials been disclosed." Brady evidence includes statements of witnesses or physical evidence that conflicts with the prosecution's witnesses and evidence that could allow the defense to

impeach Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements. In ...

the credibility of a prosecution witness.

Aftermath

Brady was given a new hearing, where his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Brady was ultimately paroled. He moved to Florida, where he worked as a truck driver, started a family and did not re-offend. Police officers who have been dishonest are sometimes referred to as "Brady cops". Because of the ''Brady'' ruling, prosecutors are required to notify defendants and their attorneys whenever a law enforcement official involved in their case has a confirmed record of knowingly lying in an official capacity. This requirement has been understood by lawyers and jurists as requiring prosecutors to maintain lists, known as Brady lists, of police officers who are not credible witnesses and whose involvement in a case undermines a prosecution's integrity. ''Brady'' has become not only a matter of defendants' due process trial rights, but also of police officers’ due process employment rights. Officers and their unions have used litigation, legislation, and informal political pressure to push back on ''Brady''s application to their personnel files. This conflict over ''Brady''s application creates a divide between prosecutors and police officers, and between police management and police labor. Brady evidence also includes evidence material to credibility of a non-police witness, such as evidence of false statements by the witness or evidence that a witness was paid to act as an informant.''Banks'', 540 U.S., at 694, 698. In '' United States v. Bagley'' (1985), the Court narrowed the reach of ''Brady'' by stating the suppressed evidence had to be "exculpatory" and "material" for a violation to result in the reversal of a conviction.

Harry Blackmun Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Black ...

wrote in ''Bagley'' that "only if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A 'reasonable probability' is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome."

References

Sources

* * * * Hooper, Laural L.; Marsh, Jennifer E.; and Yeh, Brian
''Treatment of Brady v. Maryland Material in United States District and State Courts’ Rules, Orders, and Policies: Report to the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States''

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, October 2004. * * *

External links

* * Th
''Brady'' List
a public-facing database of information including police misconduct, public complaints and use-of-force reports {{Criminal due process, brady, state=expanded Brady material case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court 1963 in United States case law