Cite as: 527 U. S. 263 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
lice investigators and not to the prosecutor." Id., at 438. In order to comply with Brady, therefore, "the individual prosecutor has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government's behalf in this case, including the police." Kyles, 514 U. S., at 437.
These cases, together with earlier cases condemning the knowing use of perjured testimony,19 illustrate the special role played by the American prosecutor in the search for truth in criminal trials. Within the federal system, for example, we have said that the United States Attorney is "the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done." Berger v. United States, 295 U. S. 78, 88 (1935).
This special status explains both the basis for the prosecution's broad duty of disclosure and our conclusion that not every violation of that duty necessarily establishes that the outcome was unjust. Thus the term "Brady violation" is sometimes used to refer to any breach of the broad obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence 20—that is, to any suppression of so-called "Brady material"—although, strictly speaking, there is never a real "Brady violation" unless the nondis-closure was so serious that there is a reasonable probability that the suppressed evidence would have produced a different verdict. There are three components of a true Brady violation: The evidence at issue must be favorable to the ac-19 See, e. g., Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U. S. 103, 112 (1935) (per curiam); Pyle v. Kansas, 317 U. S. 213, 216 (1942); Napue v. Illinois, 360 U. S. 264, 269-270 (1959).
20 Consider, for example, this comment in the dissenting opinion in Kyles v. Whitley: "It is petitioner's burden to show that in light of all the evidence, including that untainted by the Brady violation, it is reasonably probable that a jury would have entertained a reasonable doubt regarding petitioner's guilt." 514 U. S., at 460 (opinion of Scalia, J.).
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