442
Opinion of the Court
the defense would have had a compelling argument that Williams's description pointed to Beanie but not to Kyles.13
The trial testimony of a second eyewitness, Isaac Smallwood, was equally damning to Kyles. He testified that Kyles was the assailant, and that he saw him struggle with Dye. He said he saw Kyles take a ".32, a small black gun" out of his right pocket, shoot Dye in the head, and drive off in her LTD. When the prosecutor asked him whether he actually saw Kyles shoot Dye, Smallwood answered "Yeah." Tr. 41-48 (Dec. 6, 1984).
Smallwood's statement taken at the parking lot, however, was vastly different. Immediately after the crime, Small-13 The defense could have further underscored the possibility that Beanie was Dye's killer through cross-examination of the police on their failure to direct any investigation against Beanie. If the police had disclosed Beanie's statements, they would have been forced to admit that their informant Beanie described Kyles as generally wearing his hair in a "bush" style (and so wearing it when he sold the car to Beanie), whereas Beanie wore his in plaits. There was a considerable amount of such Brady evidence on which the defense could have attacked the investigation as shoddy. The police failed to disclose that Beanie had charges pending against him for a theft at the same Schwegmann's store and was a primary suspect in the January 1984 murder of Patricia Leidenheimer, who, like Dye, was an older woman shot once in the head during an armed robbery. (Even though Beanie was a primary suspect in the Leiden-heimer murder as early as September, he was not interviewed by the police about it until after Kyles's second trial in December. Beanie confessed his involvement in the murder, but was never charged in connection with it.) These were additional reasons for Beanie to ingratiate himself with the police and for the police to treat him with a suspicion they did not show. Indeed, notwithstanding Justice Scalia's suggestion that Beanie would have been "stupid" to inject himself into the investigation, post, at 461, the Brady evidence would have revealed at least two motives for Beanie to come forward: he was interested in reward money and he was worried that he was already a suspect in Dye's murder (indeed, he had been seen driving the victim's car, which had been the subject of newspaper and television reports). See supra, at 425-426. For a discussion of further Brady evidence to attack the investigation, see especially Part IV-B, infra.
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