MD Court of Appeals grants new trial over prosecutors duty to

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 17, 2006 by Daniel Ostrovsky

A man convicted of killing his girlfriend to collect on her life insurance policy will get a new trial, after the state's highest court held that prosecutors failed to turn over impeaching information about the main witness in the case.The prosecutor in the case of Tony Williams was unaware that a jailhouse snitch, who testified that he came forward out of the goodness of his heart, was actually a registered paid police informant, working with police and other Baltimore City prosecutors to find a way out of his own legal troubles.Ignorance, however, was no excuse, the Court of Appeals concluded.The policy basis for our decision is simple: imputing the knowledge of any evidence held by one prosecutor to another prosecutor within the same office, will, potentially, avoid problems of intentional shielding of information and the existence of artificially created circumstances in which prosecutors can 'plausibly deny' having had access to any exculpatory evidence, Chief Judge Robert M.

Bell wrote for the court.Both the Supreme Court's 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland and Maryland Rule 4-263 (g) require not just individual prosecutors, but the state's attorney's office as an entity, to produce any exculpatory or mitigating information to the defense, the Court of Appeals found.Prosecutors will now have to issue an internal memorandum to the other members of the office that 'X informant is working for me - he is also working in your case, you need to know this,' said Fred Warren Bennett, Williams' attorney. However, Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, said her office has asked the Baltimore City Police Department to produce a database of confidential informants, so they can be identified by number.We expect that at some point the police department will have this updated database, Burns said. Without it, she said, the kind of coordination mandated by the Court of Appeals is virtually an impossible task.Tony Williams was housed in an adjacent jail cell with Sean Williams (no relation) in 1998, after being charged with killing Dana Rochelle Drake in northeast Baltimore.Sean Williams was the main witness at trial and testified that Tony Williams admitted buying the murder weapon and killing Drake to collect money on her life insurance policy.The prosecutor in Tony Williams' case believed that Sean Williams came forward on his own.According to Bennett, when Sean Williams took the stand, he had the gall to say that he was testifying basically on the theory that he had come to Jesus and was against crime, when in fact he was trying to work off charges and/or work off time.Indeed, Sean Williams had been a registered paid police informant for at least 10 years; and, at the time of Tony Williams' arrest, he was facing charges in connection with the theft of a battery and a police cruiser from the Eastern District police station, the opinion says.A Baltimore prosecutor stetted those charges in return for Sean Williams' help with narcotics cases.After Tony Williams was convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years, his lawyers filed a post-conviction petition, citing the information they obtained about Sean Williams.A judge denied that petition in 2002, holding that under Brady and Maryland Rule 4-263 (g), the State's duty did not extend to information held by another prosecutor within the same prosecutor's office, who, at all times, was wholly unconnected to the case at issue.In 2003, the Court of Special Appeals reversed, a decision that was affirmed by the Court of Appeals on Friday.As the seeker of truth, the State, as prosecutor, cannot seek to insulate itself from its constitutionally mandated duty by dividing itself into pieces, thus permitting one piece to claim ignorance of the knowledge of the other pieces, Bell wrote.Bell also wrote that the State's reliance on out-of-state case law was misplaced, in that the precedent provides the State with no help and actually undermines the State's position.The Court of Appeals disagreed with the state that it was up to Tony Williams to uncover information about the witness and that the testimony of Sean Williams was not material.BELL: IMPUTED KNOWLEDGEWHAT THE COURT HELDCase:State v. Tony Williams, CA No. 97, Sept. Term 2003. Reported. Opinion by Bell, C.J. Filed April 14, 2006.Issue:Did the lower court err in holding that Brady v. Maryland and Maryland Rule 4-263 (g) extend beyond the individual prosecutor, encompassing exculpatory or mitigating information known to any prosecutor in the office?Holding:No; affirmed. Brady and Maryland Rule 4-263 (g) require that encompassing exculpatory or mitigating information known to any prosecutor in the office be turned over to the defense.Counsel:Assistant A.G. Annabelle L. Lisic for petitioner; Robert W. Biddle and Fred Warren Bennett for respondent.