Cite as: 517 U. S. 456 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
more crack and a loaded gun. The agents later arrested the other respondents as part of the ring.
In response to the indictment, respondents filed a motion for discovery or for dismissal of the indictment, alleging that they were selected for federal prosecution because they are black. In support of their motion, they offered only an affidavit by a "Paralegal Specialist," employed by the Office of the Federal Public Defender representing one of the respondents. The only allegation in the affidavit was that, in every one of the 24 § 841 or § 846 cases closed by the office during 1991, the defendant was black. Accompanying the affidavit was a "study" listing the 24 defendants, their race, whether they were prosecuted for dealing cocaine as well as crack, and the status of each case.1
The Government opposed the discovery motion, arguing, among other things, that there was no evidence or allegation "that the Government has acted unfairly or has prosecuted non-black defendants or failed to prosecute them." App. 150. The District Court granted the motion. It ordered the Government (1) to provide a list of all cases from the last three years in which the Government charged both cocaine and firearms offenses, (2) to identify the race of the defendants in those cases, (3) to identify what levels of law enforcement were involved in the investigations of those cases, and (4) to explain its criteria for deciding to prosecute those defendants for federal cocaine offenses. Id., at 161-162.
The Government moved for reconsideration of the District Court's discovery order. With this motion it submitted af-1 Other defendants had introduced this study in support of similar discovery motions in at least two other Central District cocaine prosecutions. App. 83. Both motions were denied. One District Judge explained from the bench that the 23-person sample before him was "statistically insignificant," and that the evidence did not indicate "whether there is a bias in the distribution of crime that says black people use crack cocaine, hispanic people use powdered cocaine, caucasian people use whatever it is they use." Id., at 119, 120.
459
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