Brady v. Maryland – Sandy Rosenberg

My bill list keeps getting longer and shorter.

I kept quite a few bill drafters busy this summer and made an additional request today, my first day in Annapolis of my 32nd year as a member of the House of Delegates.

Clint Bamberger argued the 1963 case where the Supreme Court required that the prosecution give defense counsel evidence that could materially affect the verdict or sentence.

Yesterday, Clint emailed me about a Texas law requiring the government to turn over all of its evidence. Today, I made the bill request.

Two advocates stopped by to tell me that my committee chairman had suggested that I introduce a bill that their group supported. I’m interested but need to check with my chairman first.

I had written a national group about my interest in replicating in Maryland what the group had initiated in another state.

Today I heard back. “We are excited by your interest…and look forward to partnering with you.” Not certain yet whether a bill will be needed.

A local group has not been so responsive. Perhaps a bill requiring them to do what they said they would do but haven’t will get their attention.

Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted, but when criminal trials are fair; our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote that in the majority opinion in Brady v. Maryland, where the Supreme Court held that the government cannot withhold evidence favorable to an accused, upon request, where the evidence is material to either guilt or punishment, regardless of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.

As a legislator, I know that enacting a bill isn’t the end of the process. You have to make sure it’s correctly implemented.

Same thing for Supreme Court decisions, according to an editorial in Sunday’s New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/beyond-the-brady-rule.html

Prosecutors don’t always inform a defendant’s lawyer of evidence that could be favorable to the accused. The Brady rule has been limited by subsequent rulings of the court, and there is virtually no punishment for prosecutors who flout the rule.

A North Carolina statute requires prosecutors in felony cases, before trial, to make available to the defense “the complete files of all law enforcement agencies, investigatory agencies and prosecutors’ offices involved in the investigation of the crimes committed or the prosecution of the defendant.”

Yesterday, I asked the lobbyist for the Office of the Public Defender if he was interested in pursuing a similar law in Marylam was interested in pursuing a similar law Maryland.

“We would be very interested in discussing this,” he responded.

We’re meeting next week. Other lawyers will be joining us.

One of them is Clint Bamberger, my lead paint and legal adviser and mentor.

He represented John Brady before the Supreme Court fifty years ago this month.