470
Scalia, J., dissenting
at 112. In accordance with that proposition, the footnote recited a hypothetical that shows how a witness's testimony could have been destroyed by withheld evidence that contradicts the witness.4 That is worlds apart from having it destroyed by the corrosive effect of withheld evidence that impeaches (or, as here, merely weakens) some other corroborating witness.
The physical evidence confirms the immateriality of the nondisclosures. In a garbage bag outside petitioner's home the police found Mrs. Dye's purse and other belongings. Inside his home they found, behind the kitchen stove, the .32-caliber revolver used to kill Mrs. Dye; hanging in a wardrobe, a homemade shoulder holster that was "a perfect fit" for the revolver, Tr. 74 (Dec. 6, 1984) (Detective Dillman); in a dresser drawer in the bedroom, two boxes of gun cartridges, one containing only .32-caliber rounds of the same brand found in the murder weapon, another containing .22, .32, and .38-caliber rounds; in a kitchen cabinet, eight empty Schwegmann's bags; and in a cupboard underneath that cabinet, one Schwegmann's bag containing 15 cans of pet food. Petitioner's account at trial was that Beanie planted the purse, gun, and holster, that petitioner received the ammunition from Beanie as collateral for a loan, and that petitioner had bought the pet food the day of the murder. That account strains credulity to the breaking point.
4 " 'If, for example, one of only two eyewitnesses to a crime had told the prosecutor that the defendant was definitely not its perpetrator and if this statement was not disclosed to the defense, no court would hesitate to reverse a conviction resting on the testimony of the other eyewitness. But if there were fifty eyewitnesses, forty-nine of whom identified the defendant, and the prosecutor neglected to reveal that the other, who was without his badly needed glasses on the misty evening of the crime, had said that the criminal looked something like the defendant but he could not be sure as he had only a brief glimpse, the result might well be different.' " Agurs, 427 U. S., at 112-113, n. 21 (quoting Comment, Brady v. Maryland and The Prosecutor's Duty to Disclose, 40 U. Chi. L. Rev. 112, 125 (1972)).
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