440
Opinion of the Court
And it will tend to preserve the criminal trial, as distinct from the prosecutor's private deliberations, as the chosen forum for ascertaining the truth about criminal accusations. See Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570, 577-578 (1986); Estes v. Texas, 381 U. S. 532, 540 (1965); United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 900-901 (1984) (recognizing general goal of establishing "procedures under which criminal defendants are 'acquitted or convicted on the basis of all the evidence which exposes the truth' " (quoting Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 175 (1969)). The prudence of the careful prosecutor should not therefore be discouraged.
There is room to debate whether the two judges in the majority in the Court of Appeals made an assessment of the cumulative effect of the evidence. Although the majority's Brady discussion concludes with the statement that the court was not persuaded of the reasonable probability that Kyles would have obtained a favorable verdict if the jury had been "exposed to any or all of the undisclosed materials," 5 F. 3d, at 817, the opinion also contains repeated references dismissing particular items of evidence as immaterial and so suggesting that cumulative materiality was not the touch-stone. See, e. g., id., at 812 ("We do not agree that this statement made the transcript material and so mandated disclosure . . . . Beanie's statement . . . is itself not decisive"), 814 ("The nondisclosure of this much of the transcript was insignificant"), 815 ("Kyles has not shown on this basis that the three statements were material"), 815 ("In light of the entire record . . . we cannot conclude that [police reports relating to discovery of the purse in the trash] would, in reasonable probability, have moved the jury to embrace the theory it otherwise discounted"), 816 ("We are not persuaded that these notes [relating to discovery of the gun] were material"), 816 ("[W]e are not persuaded that [the printout of the license plate numbers] would, in reasonable probability, have induced reasonable doubt where the jury did not find it. . . . the rebuttal of the photograph would have made no differ-
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