Cite as: 514 U. S. 419 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
ence"). The result reached by the Fifth Circuit majority is compatible with a series of independent materiality evaluations, rather than the cumulative evaluation required by Bagley, as the ensuing discussion will show.
IV
In this case, disclosure of the suppressed evidence to competent counsel would have made a different result reasonably probable.
A
As the District Court put it, "the essence of the State's case" was the testimony of eyewitnesses, who identified Kyles as Dye's killer. 5 F. 3d, at 853 (Appendix A). Disclosure of their statements would have resulted in a markedly weaker case for the prosecution and a markedly stronger one for the defense. To begin with, the value of two of those witnesses would have been substantially reduced or destroyed.
The State rated Henry Williams as its best witness, who testified that he had seen the struggle and the actual shooting by Kyles. The jury would have found it helpful to probe this conclusion in the light of Williams's contemporaneous statement, in which he told the police that the assailant was "a black male, about 19 or 20 years old, about 5'4" or 5'5", 140 to 150 pounds, medium build" and that "his hair looked like it was platted." App. 197. If cross-examined on this description, Williams would have had trouble explaining how he could have described Kyles, 6-feet tall and thin, as a man more than half a foot shorter with a medium build.12 Indeed, since Beanie was 22 years old, 5'5" tall, and 159 pounds,
12 The record makes numerous references to Kyles being approximately six feet tall and slender; photographs in the record tend to confirm these descriptions. The description of Beanie in the text comes from his police file. Record photographs of Beanie also depict a man possessing a medium build.
441
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