548
Per Curiam
useful evidence" does not violate due process "unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police." Id., at 58 (emphasis added).
The substance seized from respondent was plainly the sort of "potentially useful evidence" referred to in Youngblood, not the material exculpatory evidence addressed in Brady and Agurs. At most, respondent could hope that, had the evidence been preserved, a fifth test conducted on the substance would have exonerated him. See Youngblood, 488 U. S., at 57. But respondent did not allege, nor did the Appellate Court find, that the Chicago police acted in bad faith when they destroyed the substance. Quite the contrary, police testing indicated that the chemical makeup of the substance inculpated, not exculpated, respondent, see id., at 57, n., and it is undisputed that police acted in "good faith and in accord with their normal practice," id., at 56 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting California v. Trombetta, 467 U. S. 479, 488 (1984), in turn quoting Killian v. United States, 368 U. S. 231, 242 (1961)). Under Youngblood, then, respondent has failed to establish a due process violation.
We have never held or suggested that the existence of a pending discovery request eliminates the necessity of showing bad faith on the part of police. Indeed, the result reached in this case demonstrates why such a per se rule would negate the very reason we adopted the bad-faith requirement in the first place: to "limi[t] the extent of the police's obligation to preserve evidence to reasonable grounds and confin[e] it to that class of cases where the interests of justice most clearly require it." 488 U. S., at 58.
We also disagree that Youngblood does not apply whenever the contested evidence provides a defendant's "only hope for exoneration" and is " 'essential to and determinative of the outcome of the case.' " App. to Pet. for Cert. 15-16 (citing Newberry, supra, at 315, 652 N. E. 2d, at 291). In Youngblood, the Arizona Court of Appeals said that the destroyed evidence "could [have] eliminate[d] the defendant
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