298
Opinion of Souter, J.
tended by these words does not require defendants to show that a different outcome would have been more likely than not with the suppressed evidence, let alone that without the materials withheld the evidence would have been insufficient to support the result reached. See ante, at 289-290; Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U. S. 419, 434-435 (1995). Instead, the Court restates the question (as I have done elsewhere) as whether " 'the favorable evidence could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence' " in the outcome. Ante, at 290 (quoting Kyles, supra, at 435).
Despite our repeated explanation of the shorthand formulation in these words, the continued use of the term "probability" raises an unjustifiable risk of misleading courts into treating it as akin to the more demanding standard, "more likely than not." While any short phrases for what the cases are getting at will be "inevitably imprecise," United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97, 108 (1976), I think "significant possibility" would do better at capturing the degree to which the undisclosed evidence would place the actual result in question, sufficient to warrant overturning a conviction or sentence.
To see that this is so, we need to recall Brady's evolution since the appearance of the rule as originally stated, that "suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution." Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83, 87 (1963). Brady itself did not explain what it meant by "material" (perhaps assuming the term would be given its usual meaning in the law of evidence, see United States v. Bagley, 473 U. S. 667, 703, n. 5 (1985) (Marshall, J., dissenting)). We first essayed a partial definition in United States v. Agurs, supra, where we identified three situations arguably within the ambit of Brady and said that in the first, involving knowing use of perjured testi-
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