Cite as: 527 U. S. 263 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
Given the record evidence involving Henderson,36 the District Court concluded that, without Stoltzfus' testimony, the jury might have been persuaded that Henderson, rather than petitioner, was the ringleader. He reasoned that a "reasonable probability of conviction" of first-degree, rather than capital, murder sufficed to establish the materiality of the undisclosed Stoltzfus materials and, thus, a Brady violation. App. 396.
The District Court was surely correct that there is a reasonable possibility that either a total, or just a substantial, discount of Stoltzfus' testimony might have produced a different result, either at the guilt or sentencing phases. Petitioner did, for example, introduce substantial mitigating evidence about abuse he had suffered as a child at the hands of his stepfather.37 As the District Court recognized, however, petitioner's burden is to establish a reasonable probability of a different result. Kyles, 514 U. S., at 434.
36 The District Court summarized the evidence against Henderson. "Henderson's clothes had blood on them that night. Henderson had property belonging to Whitlock and gave her watch to a woman, Simmons, while at a restaurant known as Dice's Inn. Tr. 541. Henderson left Dice's Inn driving Whitlock's car. Henderson's wallet was found in the vicinity of Whitlock's body and was possibly lost during his struggle with her. Significantly, Henderson confessed to a friend on the night of the murder that he had just killed an unidentified black person and that friend observed blood on Henderson's jeans." App. 395.
37 At sentencing, the trial court discussed the mitigation evidence: "On the charge of capital murder . . . it is difficult . . . to sit here and listen to the testimony of [petitioner's mother] and Mr. Strickler's two sisters and not feel a great, great deal of sympathy for, for any person who has a childhood and a life like Mr. Strickler has had. He was in no way responsible for the circumstances of his birth. He was brutalized from the minute he's, almost from the minute he was born and certainly with his . . . limitations and his ability with which he was born, it would have been extremely difficult for him to, to help himself. And difficult, when you look at a case like that to feel but anything but sympathy for him." Sentencing Hearing, 20 Record 57-58.
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