468
Scalia, J., dissenting
The Court's second means of seeking to neutralize the impressive and unanimous eyewitness testimony uses the same "build-is-everything" theory to exaggerate the effect of the State's failure to disclose the contemporaneous statement of Henry Williams. That statement would assuredly have permitted a sharp cross-examination, since it contained estimations of height and weight that fit Beanie better than petitioner. Ante, at 441-442. But I think it is hyperbole to say that the statement would have "substantially reduced or destroyed" the value of Williams' testimony. Ante, at 441. Williams saw the murderer drive slowly by less than 10 feet away, Tr. 54 (Dec. 6, 1984), and unhesitatingly picked him out of the photo lineup. The jury might well choose to give greater credence to the simple fact of identification than to the difficult estimation of height and weight.
The Court spends considerable time, see ante, at 443, showing how Smallwood's testimony could have been discredited to such a degree as to "rais[e] a substantial implication that the prosecutor had coached him to give it." Ibid. Perhaps so, but that is all irrelevant to this appeal, since all of that impeaching material (except the "facial identification" point I have discussed above) was available to the defense independently of the Brady material. See ante, at 443-444, n. 14. In sum, the undisclosed statements, credited with everything they could possibly have provided to the defense, leave two prosecution witnesses (Territo and Kersh) totally untouched; one prosecution witness (Smallwood) barely affected (he saw "only" the killer's face); and one prosecution witness (Williams) somewhat impaired (his description of the killer's height and weight did not match Kyles). We must keep all this in due perspective, remembering that the relevant question in the materiality inquiry is not how many points the defense could have scored off the prosecution witnesses, but whether it is reasonably probable that the new evidence would have caused the jury to accept the basic thesis that all four witnesses were mistaken. I think it plainly
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