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Opinion of the Court

ing until sometime between 10 p. m. and midnight. The club's bartender testified to the same effect. Each of these witnesses nevertheless admitted that he could not remember seeing Moore at the club that night, but said that he would have known if he had been absent for any substantial period of time. The club records also indicated that Moore worked at the club the afternoon of April 27, when, according to the testimony of Sanders, Fair, and Joyce, Moore was at the Ponderosa Tap in Dolton.3

J. O'Brien, a customer at Zitek's, testified for the defense that he observed Zitek eject two men the evening of the 25th, and that Moore was not one of them. Although he was in the restaurant at the time of the homicide, he did not see the person who shot Zitek. A police officer testified that in his opinion O'Brien was drunk at the time.

III

Prior to the trial, the defense moved for disclosure of all written statements taken by the police from any witness. The State agreed to furnish existing statements of prosecution witnesses. At the post-conviction hearing, Moore argued, and the claim is presented here, that he was denied a fair trial because six items of evidence, unknown to him at the time of the trial, were not produced and, in fact, were suppressed by the State:

A. On April 30, 1962, Sanders gave a statement to the police that he had met the man "Slick" for the first time “about six months ago" in Wanda and Del's tavern. Testimony at the post-conviction hearing by Lieutenant Turbin of the Lansing Police Department revealed that at the time of trial the police possessed an FBI report

3 A like alibi defense was submitted at the earlier armed robbery trial of Moore and Barbee. People v. Moore, 35 Ill. 2d, at 406, 220 N. E. 2d, at 447.

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that Moore was in Leavenworth Penitentiary from 1957 to March 4, 1962. That report thus proved that Sanders could not have met Moore at Wanda and Del's in November 1961. The defense was not given a copy of the statement made by Sanders. The prosecuting attorney asserted at the post-conviction hearing that he did not recall having seen the statement before or during the trial.

B. On the day Sanders gave his statement, that is, on April 30, the police raided Wanda and Del's looking for "Slick." "Slick" was not there, but Jones, the tavern's operator, said that he could identify "Slick." After Moore was arrested, Jones was not asked by the police whether Moore was "Slick." The defense was not advised of the raid until after the trial. At the postconviction hearing Jones testified that Moore was not "Slick." His testimony, however, was stricken on the ground that it pertained to innocence or guilt and was not admissible upon collateral review.

C. After the raid on Wanda and Del's, the police secured from their files a picture of James E. "Slick" Watts and assigned Lieutenant Turbin the task of finding Watts. His search was unsuccessful. Moore asserts that the attempt to find Watts was not made known to the defense until cross-examination of the Lansing police chief at the post-conviction hearing.

D. After Moore was arrested on October 31, he was photographed by the police. The photograph was shown to William Leon Thompson, the patron of Wanda and Del's. Thompson testified at the post-conviction hearing that he told Lieutenant Turbin that the picture "didn't, to the best of my knowledge, resemble the man that I knew" as "Slick." He identified a picture of Watts as "the Slick I know." Defense counsel testified that through the course of the trial neither the police

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nor the prosecutor advised them about Thompson and his disclaimer.

E. At the start of the trial Sanders observed Moore for the first time since the alleged bragging incident at the Ponderosa Tap. Sanders remarked to the prosecuting attorney and to police officers who accompanied him into the courtroom that the person he knew as "Slick" was about 30-40 pounds heavier than Moore and did not wear glasses. One of the officers responded, "Well, you know how the jailhouse beans are." Moore contends that he and defense counsel were not advised of this remark of Sanders until after the trial had concluded.

F. Mayer, one of the card players at Zitek's at the time of the murder, gave the police a written statement. On the back of the statement Officer Koppitz drew a sketch of the seating arrangement at the card table. The diagram shows that the corners of the table pointed north, south, east, and west. Cardplayer Powell was placed on the southwest side. The bar was about 10 feet north of the table. The door was to the southwest. Moore argues that the diagram is exculpatory and contradicts Powell's testimony that he observed the shooting. Defense counsel testified that they were not shown the diagram during the trial.

Moore argues, as to the first five items, that the State did not comply with the general request by the defense for all written statements given by prosecution witnesses; that the State failed to produce the pretrial statement of Sanders and the other evidence contradicting Sanders' identification of Moore as "Slick"; and that the evidence not produced was material and would have been helpful to his defense.

The Illinois court held that the State had not suppressed material evidence favorable to Moore, that the

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record shows that the prosecution presented its entire file to defense counsel, and that no further request for disclosure was made. 42 Ill. 2d, at 80-81, 246 N. E. 2d, at 304. Moore submits here the alternative claim that a specific request is not an "indispensable prerequisite" for the disclosure of exonerating evidence by the State and that the defense could not be expected to make a request for specific evidence that it did not know was in existence.

In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), the petitioner and a companion were found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder and were sentenced to death. In his summation to the jury, Brady's counsel conceded that Brady was guilty, but argued that the jury should return its verdict "without capital punishment." Prior to the trial, counsel had requested that the prosecution allow him to examine the codefendant's extra-judicial statements. Some of these were produced, but another, in which the codefendant admitted the actual homicide, was withheld and did not come to Brady's notice until after his conviction. In a post-conviction proceeding, the Maryland Court of Appeals held that this denied Brady due process of law, and remanded the case for retrial on the issue of punishment. This Court affirmed. It 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." 373 U. S., at 87.

The heart of the holding in Brady is the prosecution's suppression of evidence, in the face of a defense production request, where the evidence is favorable to the accused and is material either to guilt or to punishment. Important, then, are (a) suppression by the prosecution after a request by the defense, (b) the evidence's favor

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able character for the defense, and (c) the materiality of the evidence. These are the standards by which the prosecution's conduct in Moore's case is to be measured.

Moore's counsel asked several prosecution witnesses if they had given statements to the police. Each witness (Hill, Powell, Fair) who had given a statement admitted doing so and the statement was immediately tendered. The same inquiry was not made of witness Sanders. He was the only state witness who was not asked the question. At the post-conviction hearing the inquiry was made. Sanders admitted making a statement to the police and the statement was tendered.

The record discloses, as the Illinois court states, 42 Ill. 2d, at 80, 246 N. E. 2d, at 304, that the prosecutor at the trial submitted his entire file to the defense. The prosecutor, however, has no recollection that Sanders' statement was in the file. The statement, therefore, either was in that file and not noted by the defense or it was not in the possession of the prosecution at the trial.

We know of no constitutional requirement that the prosecution make a complete and detailed accounting to the defense of all police investigatory work on a case. Here, the elusive "Slick" was an early lead the police abandoned when eyewitnesses to the killing and witnesses to Moore's presence at the Ponderosa were found. Unquestionably, as the State now concedes,* Sanders was in error when he indicated to the police that he met Moore at Wanda and Del's about six months prior to April 30, 1962. Moore's incarceration at Leavenworth until March shows that conclusion to have been an instance of mistaken identity. But the mistake was as to the identification of Moore as "Slick," not as to

4 Brief for Respondent 4; Tr. of Oral Arg. 28.

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