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Syllabus
establishes two of those components. The contrast between (a) the terrifying incident that Stoltzfus confidently described in her testimony and (b) her initial statement to the detective that the incident seemed a trivial episode suffices to establish the impeaching character of the undisclosed documents. Moreover, with respect to some of those documents, there is no dispute that they were known to the Commonwealth but not disclosed to trial counsel. It is the third component—whether petitioner has established the necessary prejudice—that is the most difficult element of the claimed Brady violation here. Because petitioner acknowledges that his Brady claim is procedurally defaulted, this Court must first decide whether that default is excused by an adequate showing of cause and prejudice. In this case, cause and prejudice parallel two of the three components of the alleged Brady violation itself. The suppression of the Stoltzfus documents constitutes one of the causes for the failure to assert a Brady claim in the state courts, and unless those documents were "material" for Brady purposes, see 373 U. S., at 87, their suppression did not give rise to sufficient prejudice to overcome the procedural default. Pp. 280-282.
(b) Petitioner has established cause for failing to raise a Brady claim prior to federal habeas because (a) the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence; (b) petitioner reasonably relied on the prosecution's open file policy as fulfilling the prosecution's duty to disclose such evidence; and (c) the Commonwealth confirmed petitioner's reliance on the open file policy by asserting during state habeas proceedings that petitioner had already received everything known to the government. See Murray v. Carrier, 477 U. S. 478, 488, and Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U. S. 214, 222. Gray v. Netherland, 518 U. S. 152, and McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, distinguished. This Court need not decide whether any one or two of the foregoing factors would be sufficient to constitute cause, since the combination of all three surely suffices. Pp. 282-289.
(c) However, in order to obtain relief, petitioner must convince this Court that there is a reasonable probability that his conviction or sentence would have been different had the suppressed documents been disclosed to the defense. The adjective is important. The question is not whether the defendant would more likely than not have received a different verdict with the suppressed evidence, but whether in its absence he received a fair trial, understood as a trial resulting in a verdict worthy of confidence. Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U. S. 419, 434. Here, other evidence in the record provides strong support for the conclusion that petitioner would have been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, even if Stoltzfus had been severely impeached or her testimony excluded entirely. Notwithstanding the obvious significance
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