Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her first written opinion as a Supreme Court justice, said she would have sided with an inmate who argued that Ohio sent evidence that could help him at trial.
The full court refused to accept an appeal brought by Davel Chinn, who shot and killed a man named Brian Jones as part of an attempted robbery.
Chinn was sentenced to death after another man, an accomplice named Marvin Washington, identified him to the police.
But after his conviction, Chinn argued that the state had violated a 1963 case called Brady v. Maryland, when it failed to disclose Washington’s juvenile records that showed Washington had a “moderate range” of intellectual disability. He said the state’s entire case hinged on Washington’s testimony and that his credibility was in question.
Chin said the state’s failure to release the records prejudiced him because it may have been able to challenge Washington’s ability to identify him as the killer, testify accurately and recall important dates.
Lower courts ruled against Chinn, holding that failure to turn over evidence violates Brady only if the information is “material” and only if there is a reasonable possibility that—had the records been disclosed—the outcome at trial would have been different. The courts said Chinn failed to meet that standard.
The court on Monday said it was not accepting Chinn’s appeal. Jackson wrote her first written opinion — a dissent — saying there was “no dispute” that the state had “put out exculpatory evidence” and questioned how lower courts had applied the so-called “substance standard.”
He said that to prove a Brady violation, a defendant has a “low burden” to show a “reasonable probability” of a different result.
“Because Chinn’s life is in danger and given the substantial possibility that the recorded records would change the outcome at trial,” Jackson wrote, he would have summarily reversed the lower court. She was joined only by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
In a separate case before the Supreme Court on Monday, the two liberal justices also dissented together, saying they would have accepted an appeal from a Louisiana man who says he was denied his right to a fair trial when prosecutors called the assistant district attorney — the who presented the case to the grand jury – on the witness stand.
Jackson’s written dissent comes months after she cast her first vote as a justice in July. In that case, he joined Justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Sotomayor in dissenting from the court’s decision to freeze a lower court ruling that prevented the Department of Homeland Security from implementing new immigration enforcement priorities.
Jackson, the first African-American woman to serve on the high court, was sworn in on June 30.
