When Innocence Is Not Enough

October 24, 2022
The devastating impact of a prosecutor’s failure to disclose information favorable to the defense’s case is mapped in this persuasive analysis by former public defender Dybdahl. Surveying the history of the legal doctrine known as the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose such information, Dybdahl recounts the case of John Leo Brady, who received a death sentence after prosecutors withheld his accomplice’s statement admitting he committed the murder alone. Brady’s attorneys eventually discovered the statement and the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused on request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment.” Dybdahl thoroughly examines how the Brady rule was weakened by a series of judicial rulings and by police and prosecutors’ use of “coercive interrogation tactics” and “false promises of leniency” in order to elicit witness statements against defendants. He also explains that the justice system’s “abiding love of finality” encourages judges to rule that withheld information wasn’t “material” to the defense, and therefore not in violation of the Brady rule. Copious statistics and heart-wrenching case studies of false convictions back up Dybdahl’s argument for more vigorous enforcement of the rule: “If we want pretrial proceedings and guilty pleas to be fair, if we want juries to reach just verdicts, disclosing all the available, relevant evidence can only help reach that goal.” This is an open-and-shut case.

January 1, 2023
Former Washington, D.C., public defender Dybdahl takes on the Brady Rule, linking its evolution to the case of the brutal 1984 murder of a D.C. woman, Catherine Fuller. The 1963 Brady Rule requires prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence to the defense, even if it harms their case. Its boundaries and expectations, however, were not clear, and Dybdahl traces Brady's development. Dybdahl also goes in-depth on the Fuller case and those swept into it to clearly show how Brady violations impact real lives. For decades the defense strategies, appeals, and requests for new trials of the convicted were impacted by withheld evidence. In 2017, Fuller was the last case the Supreme Court heard on the Brady Rule, to no effect. Convincingly arguing that the Brady Rule, with its on-going difficulties, has failed, Dybdahl points to the success of state-level laws that more explicitly require sharing among prosecutors and defense. Though best suited for those interested in criminal law, this is a readable, frustrating, yet hopeful examination of an imperfect rule and what may come next.

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