Issue: What overarching issue was the court addressing or resolving (one questions not a paragraph just one sentence encapsulating)

Facts: What are the facts that the court described and cared about?

facts section should only include the actual facts of the case.

Rule of Law:What rule please mention the statue, case, legal principle mentioned in the images, did the court apply

* include the actual statutes, constitutional amendments or cases the Court applies the facts THE OTHER ITALIZES CASES and AMENDMENT IS USED

Application- how did the court apply the rule to the facts?

*application section should be how the Court applied the facts to the law

Conclusion: what result did the court reach and WHY?

Kyles v. Whitley

An early woman was shot in the head and killed in grocery store parking lot. The killer took her keys and drove away in her car. Since the police believed the killer might have driven his own car to the lot and left it there when he drove off in the victim's car, they recorded the license numbers of cars remaining in the parking lots around the store. Kyle's car was not among those listed. Police also took descriptions from six eye-witnesses. Their descriptions fo the killer's height, age weight, build and hair length differed significantly from each other and most bore little resemblance to Kyles. The investigation did not focus on kyles until an informant known as Beanie, who resembled the descriptions given by the witnesses, told police that the kyles committed the crime. Kyles was indicated for first-degree murder. Before trial, Kyle's attorney field a motion for disclosure by the prosecutor of any exculpatory or impeachment evidence. The prosecutor responded that there was none. The prosecutor, however, unaware of the following items in the hands of the police because the prosecutor was never informed of these items; (1) contemporaneous descriptions given by the six eyewitnesses; (2) the computer print-out of license numbers of cars parked in the grocery store parking lot on the night of the murder; and (3) evidence linking Beanie to other crimes committed in the same parking lot, Including an unrelated murder. Kyles's first trial ended in a hung jury. At the second trial, the prosecution offered a blown-up photograph taken at the crime scene soon after the murder and argued that a poorly-discernible vehicle in the background belonged to Kyles. Kyles maintained his innocence. The defense's theory was that Kyles had been framed by beanie Kyles was convicted and sentenced to death.

JUSTICE SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The prosecution's affirmative duty to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant can trace its origins to early 20th century strictures against misrepresentation and is of course most prominently associated with this Court's decision in Brady v. Maryland, Brady held "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, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution."

... Favorable evidence is material, and constitutional error results from its suppression by the government, if there is a "reasonable probability" that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.

While the definition of Bagley materiality in terms of the cumulative effect of suppression must accordingly be seen as leaving the government with a degree of discretion, it must also be understood as imposing a corresponding burden. On the one side, showing that the prosecution knew of an item of favorable evidence unknown to the defense does not amount to a Brady violation, without more. But the prosecution, which alone can know what is undisclosed, must be assigned the consequent responsibility to gauge the likely net effect of all such evidence and make disclosure when the point of "reasonable probability" is reached. This in turn means that the individual prosecutor has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government's behalf in the case, including the police. But whether the prosecutor succeeds or fails in meeting this obligation (whether, that is, a failure to disclose is in good faith or bad faith, see Brady, the prosecution's responsibility for failing to disclose known, favorable evidence rising to a material level of importance is inescapable.

The State of Louisiana would prefer an even more lenient rule. It pleads that some of the favorable evidence in issue here was not disclosed even to the prosecutor until after trial, and it suggested below that it should not be held accountable under Bagley and Brady for evidence known only to police investigators and not to the prosecutor. To accommodate the State in this manner would, however, amount to a serious change of course from the Brady line of cases. In the State's favor it may be said that no one doubts that police investigators sometimes fail to inform a prosecutor of all they know. But neither is there any serious doubt that "procedures and regulations can be established to carry [the prosecutor's] burden and to insure communication of all relevant information on each case to every lawyer who deals with it." Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Since, then, the prosecutor has the means to discharge the government's Brady responsibility if he will, any argument for excusing a prosecutor from disclosing what he does not happen to know about boils down to a plea to substitute the police for the prosecutor, and even for the courts themselves, as the final arbiters of the government's obligation to ensure fair trials.

The State of Louisiana would prefer an even more lenient rule. It pleads that some of the favorable evidence in issue here was not disclosed even to the prosecutor until after trial, Brief for Respondent 25, 27, 30, 31, and it suggested below that it should not be held accountable under Bagley and Brady for evidence known only to police investigators and not to the prosecutor. To accommodate the State in this manner would, however, amount to a serious change of course from the Brady line of cases. In the State's favor it may be said that no one doubts that police investigators sometimes fail to inform a prosecutor of all they know. But neither is there any serious doubt that "procedures and regulations can be established to carry [the prosecutor's] burden and to insure communication of all relevant information on each case to every lawyer who deals with it." Since, then, the prosecutor has the means to discharge the government's Brady responsibility if he will, any argument for excusing a prosecutor from disclosing what he does not happen to know about boils down to a plea to substitute the police for the prosecutor, and even for the courts themselves, as the final arbiters of the government's obligation to ensure fair trials.

In this case, disclosure of the suppressed evidence to competent counsel would have made a different result reasonably probable.

As the District Court put it, "the essence of the State's case" was the testimony of eyewitnesses, who identified Kyles as Dye's killer. Disclosure of their statements would have resulted in a markedly weaker case for the prosecution and a markedly stronger one for the defense. To begin with, the value of two of those witnesses would have been substantially reduced or destroyed.

Next to be considered is the prosecution's list of the cars in the Schwegmann's parking lot at mid evening after the murder. While its suppression does not rank with the failure to disclose the other evidence discussed here, it would have had some value as exculpation and impeachment, and it counts accordingly in determining whether Bagley's standard of materiality is satisfied. On the police's assumption, argued to the jury, that the killer drove to the lot and left his car there during the heat of the investigation, the list without Kyles's registration would obviously have helped Kyles and would have had some value in countering an argument by the prosecution that a grainy enlargement of a photograph of the crime scene showed Kyles's car in the background. The list would also have shown that the police either knew that it was inconsistent with their informant's second and third statements (in which Beanie described retrieving Kyles's car after the time the list was compiled) or never even bothered to check the informant's story against known fact. Either way, the defense would have had further support for arguing that the police were irresponsible in relying on Beanie to tip them off to the location of evidence damaging to Kyles.

for arguing that the police were irresponsible in relying on Beanie to tip them off to the location of evidence damaging to Kyles. * l t [The State's obligation under Brody to disclose evidence favorable to the defense turns on the cumulative effect of all such evidence suppressed by the government. We hold that the prosecutor remains responsible for gauging that effect, regardless of any failure by the police to bring favorable evidence to the prosecutor's attention. Because the net e'ect of the evidence withheld by the State in this case raises a reasonable probabil- ity that its disclosure would have produced a dif- ferent result, Kyles is entitled to a new trial] The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further pro- ceedings consistent with this opinion. I! is so ordered. [Concurring mad dissenting opinions omitted]