Cite as: 540 U. S. 544 (2004)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
as the perpetrator." 488 U. S., at 54 (quotation marks and citations omitted). Similarly here, an additional test might have provided the defendant with an opportunity to show that the police tests were mistaken. It is thus difficult to distinguish the two cases on this basis. But in any event, the applicability of the bad-faith requirement in Youngblood depended not on the centrality of the contested evidence to the prosecution's case or the defendant's defense, but on the distinction between "material exculpatory" evidence and "potentially useful" evidence. 488 U. S., at 57-58. As we have held, supra, at 548, the substance destroyed here was, at best, "potentially useful" evidence, and therefore Young-blood's bad-faith requirement applies.
The judgment of the Appellate Court of Illinois is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, concurring in the judgment. While I did not join the three Justices who dissented in Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U. S. 51 (1988), I also declined to join the majority opinion because I was convinced then, and remain convinced today, that "there may well be cases in which the defendant is unable to prove that the State acted in bad faith but in which the loss or destruction of evidence is nonetheless so critical to the defense as to make a criminal trial fundamentally unfair." Id., at 61 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment).* This, like Youngblood, is not such a case.
*Youngblood's focus on the subjective motivation of the police represents a break with our usual understanding that the presence or absence of constitutional error in suppression of evidence cases depends on the character of the evidence, not the character of the person who withholds it. United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97, 110 (1976). Since Youngblood was decided, a number of state courts have held as a matter of state constitutional law that the loss or destruction of evidence critical to the defense does violate due process, even in the absence of bad faith. As the Con-
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