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State v. Diprete5/1/1998
e had not fully complied with the orders of the court, Rule 16 of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure, the stipulation of the parties, and the Brady principles. He found that this withholding of information caused defendants to suffer substantive prejudice that warranted a remedy beyond a mere continuance. He found that the critical information had been gleaned from ten of the thirty boxes produced in July of 1996 and that most of the material came from the working files of former chief prosecutor Richard Ratcliffe, state investigator Peter Blessing, and State Police Sergeant Robert Mattos.
Although the court adverted to substantive prejudice that the delayed discovery had imposed upon defendants, his only specific finding in respect to prejudice is contained on page 31 of his decision. The court accepted the allegations of counsel for defendants that their inquiry into the content of the withheld documents and their requesting sanctions therefor caused them to reveal elements of their trial strategy to the prosecutors during this hearing by indicating exactly how the withheld material is exculpatory and how it would be used at trial to impeach the state's witnesses.
The defendants' counsel claimed that they were forced to surrender the element of surprise that is vital to effective cross-examination in their effort to ensure that their clients' constitutional rights to exculpatory information prior to trial be protected. The defendants argued to the court that this result, thrust upon them by prosecutorial misconduct, constituted substantive prejudice, which a continuance for any length of time could not cure.
The trial Justice apparently accepted the arguments of defendants and summarized his holding in the following terms:
"Since the court has found that there has been a pattern of deliberate misconduct resulting in repeated violation of Super. Ct. R. Crim. P. 16, Brady principles, the stipulation between the parties, and the court's orders, all counts of the indictment except the severed counts 23 and 24 are dismissed."
ANALYSIS
The arguments presented by the state in support of its appeal can be considered by analyzing three issues. First, the state contends that the Brady principles do not support the trial Justice's drastic remedy of dismissal of twenty-two counts of the indictment. Second, the state argues that Rule 16 and the case law in interpretation thereof does not support the judgment of dismissal. Third, the state asserts that the Superior Court has no general supervisory power that would support the judgment of dismissal. We shall consider each of these contentions in turn.
Brady Principles
The seminal case of Brady v. Maryland, supra, determined that the withholding of evidence favorable to the accused either in respect to the issue of guilt or the issue of appropriate punishment to be imposed at sentencing violated the guarantee of due process regardless of the good faith or the bad faith of the prosecution. 373 U.S. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196-97, 10 L.Ed.2d at 218. The remedy imposed upon the State of Maryland was the vacating of the sentence and the ordering of a new trial, which would be restricted to the question of punishment. Id. at 85, 83 S.Ct. at 1195, 10 L.Ed.2d at 217. Prior to Brady, the Court in Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217 (1959), ordered a new trial in the light of evidence that false testimony had been presented at trial in regard to the reward or benefit accorded to a prosecution witness. The Court held that this false testimony constituted a denial of due process, entitling the defendant to a new trial if there was any reasonable likelih
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Rhode Island Personal Injury Attorneys
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