Federal prosecutors in Washington failed to timely turn over exculpatory information to the lawyers representing a man in a shooting case, a divided appeals court said today in throwing out the conviction and sending the case back for a new trial in D.C. Superior Court.
The D.C. Court of Appeals, voting 2-1, said prosecutors "effectively suppressed" favorable information, violating their obligation to disclose exculpatory information to the defense lawyers representing a man named Tyree Miller. At issue in the case: testimony that the shooter held the gun in his left hand. Miller is right-handed.
The court also split over whether the trial judge, Craig Iscoe, should inquire whether prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia committed an ethics violation in allegedly shirking their duty, under Brady v. Maryland, to timely provide Miller’s defense lawyers with information beneficial to his case. The court, which heard arguments a year ago, published its 75-page opinion here.
Judge Vanessa Ruiz wrote that Iscoe, after he gets the case back, should investigate whether prosecutors ran afoul of District of Columbia professional conduct rules that make an intentional failure to provide exculpatory information an ethical violation. Iscoe, the appeals court judge said, should examine statements prosecutors made in court that Brady material had been disclosed.
Ruiz, however, said there are too many unanswered questions in the case to declare that any prosecutor had acted in bad faith. Another judge on the panel, Senior Judge Frank Schwelb, who wrote for the majority, disagreed with Ruiz’s call for an investigation of the prosecution team. Schwelb also said the court is not saying prosecutors deliberately violated their obligations under Brady.
“The legal issue as to the point at which exculpatory information must be disclosed to the defense, in circumstances such as those before us, is a difficult one, as to which reasonable judges and lawyers can and do disagree, conscientiously and in good faith,” Schwelb wrote. “We do not believe that the vigorous assertion of counsel’s position as to when disclosure was mandated should be viewed as potentially implicating counsel’s professional ethics.”
Schwelb said it's unfair for prosecutors to first learn about a proposed ethics investigation via a published appellate court opinion.
Judge John Fisher, who voted against reversing Miller's conviction, said he agreed there is no ground for an ethics investigation. In his dissent, Fisher said Miller’s lawyers made “effective use” of grand jury testimony despite its delayed disclosure.
“This clearly was a challenging case, for both the prosecution and the defense, but [Miller] has not established that the government suppressed exculpatory evidence, in violation of the Brady doctrine,” Fisher wrote.
Samuel Ramer, an assistant U.S. attorney who worked on the Miller case, is now senior counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. Ramer declined to comment on the court's ruling, saying that the case is still in litigation.
Bill Miller, the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said the government is reviewing the opinion and declined further comment.
A jury convicted Tyree Miller of assault with intent to commit murder and eight related offenses. Miller was 17 at the time he allegedly committed the crimes, which involved the shooting of a teenager in March 2006 in Southeast Washington. The victim was shot twice in the back and twice in his legs.
Miller, jailed since his arrest a month after the shooting, was sentenced to concurrent prison terms totaling nearly 13 years.
Miller’s lawyers said prosecutors turned over, on the evening before opening statements, grand jury testimony from the prosecution’s principal eye witness. The witness said the shooter held a pistol in his left hand.
A prosecution witness who was a suspect in the shooting is left-handed, according to the appellate court ruling. That witness allegedly provided contradictory versions of the shooting.
Iscoe, the trial judge, said prosecutors provided the exculpatory material in enough time for Miller’s lawyers to effectively use the information at trial. Late disclosures, Iscoe said, are better than no disclosure at all, according to the appeals court.
Schwelb, the appeals court judge, said the record is unclear on when the prosecutor, who is not identified in the court’s opinion, knew that Miller was right-handed.
Prosecutors said in court papers that the government had no obligation to turn over evidence that the gunman fired with his left hand, since that information was not “material” to Miller’s defense. "The government has no constitutional duty to disclose evidence that is favorable but not material," prosecutors said.
Schwelb said the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual provides a “telling contrast” between the government’s stated version of fairness and prosecutors’ representations in the Miller case. The manual says prosecutors “generally must take a broad view of materiality and err on the side of disclosing exculpatory and impeaching evidence.”
Miller’s appellate attorney, Corinne Beckwith of the D.C. Public Defender Service, who is a candidate for Superior Court judge, was not immediately reached for comment this afternoon.
Public defender trial attorneys Anthony Matthews and Katerina Semyonova, who represented Miller, did not immediately return phone calls.
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