448
Opinion of the Court
would be in the garbage, would have supported the defense's theory that Beanie was no mere observer, but was determining the investigation's direction and success. The potential for damage from using Beanie's statement to undermine the ostensible integrity of the investigation is only confirmed by the prosecutor's admission at one of Kyles's postconviction hearings, that he did not recall a single instance before this case when police had searched and seized garbage on the street in front of a residence, Tr. of Hearing on Post-Conviction Relief 113 (Feb. 20, 1989), and by Detective John Miller's admission at the same hearing that he thought at the time that it "was a possibility" that Beanie had planted the incriminating evidence in the garbage, Tr. of Hearing on Post-Conviction Relief 51 (Feb. 24, 1989). If a police officer thought so, a juror would have, too.16
To the same effect would have been an enquiry based on Beanie's apparently revealing remark to police that "if you can set [Kyles] up good, you can get that same gun." 17 App.
228-229. While the jury might have understood that Beanie meant simply that if the police investigated Kyles, they would probably find the murder weapon, the jury could also have taken Beanie to have been making the more sinister
16 The dissent, rightly, does not contend that Beanie would have had a hard time planting the purse in Kyles's garbage. See post, at 471 (arguing that it would have been difficult for Beanie to plant the gun and homemade holster). All that would have been needed was for Beanie to put the purse into a trash bag out on the curb. See Tr. 97, 101 (Dec. 6, 1984) (testimony of Detective Dillman; garbage bags were seized from "a common garbage area" on the street in "the early morning hours when there wouldn't be anyone on the street").
17 The dissent, post, at 461-462, argues that it would have been stupid for Beanie to have tantalized the police with the prospect of finding the gun one day before he may have planted it. It is odd that the dissent thinks the Brady reassessment requires the assumption that Beanie was shrewd and sophisticated: the suppressed evidence indicates that within a period of a few hours after he first called police Beanie gave three different accounts of Kyles's recovery of the purse (and gave yet another about a month later).
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