ABSTRACT
In its 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland, the United States Supreme Court held that the prosecution has an obligation, under the United States Constitution's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clauses, to provide favorable evidence to the defense, on request, when that evidence is material to guilt or punishment. This chapter discusses the scope of the prosecutor's duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense from the constitutional, common law Brady doctrine to legislative and judicial requirements. It also analyzes the cases involving Brady and innocence. It is divided according to the forms of unreliable proof the suppression of which have been shown repeatedly to result in erroneous convictions: faulty eyewitness identification, third-party guilt, misleading or false forensic evidence, false confessions, and unreliable government "snitches". Prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence has emerged as one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.
