Cite as: 527 U. S. 263 (1999)
Opinion of Souter, J.
dice or materiality,2 over which I ultimately part company with the majority, I am persuaded that Strickler has failed to establish a reasonable probability that, had the materials withheld been disclosed, he would not have been found guilty of capital murder. See ante, at 292-296. As the Court says, however, the prejudice enquiry does not stop at the conviction but goes to each step of the sentencing process: the jury's consideration of aggravating, death-qualifying facts, the jury's discretionary recommendation of a death sentence if it finds the requisite aggravating factors, and the judge's discretionary decision to follow the jury's recommendation. See ante, at 294-296. It is with respect to the penultimate step in determining the sentence that I think Strickler has carried his burden. I believe there is a reasonable probability (which I take to mean a significant possibility) that disclosure of the Stoltzfus materials would have led the jury to recommend life, not death, and I respectfully dissent.
I
Before I get to the analysis of prejudice I should say something about the standard for identifying it, and about the unfortunate phrasing of the shorthand version in which the standard is customarily couched. The Court speaks in terms of the familiar, and perhaps familiarly deceptive, formulation: whether there is a "reasonable probability" of a different outcome if the evidence withheld had been disclosed. The Court rightly cautions that the standard indisputed documents in its analysis, see ante, at 282, I understand it to have assumed that none of the eight documents was disclosed. I proceed based on that assumption as well. If one thought the difference between five and eight documents withheld would affect the determination of prejudice, a remand to resolve that factual question would be necessary.
2 In keeping with suggestions in a number of our opinions, see Schlup v. Delo, 513 U. S. 298, 327, n. 45 (1995); Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U. S. 333, 345 (1992), the Court treats the prejudice enquiry as synonymous with the materiality determination under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963). See ante, at 282, 288-289, 296. I follow the Court's lead.
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