692
Opinion of the Court
B
Our determination as to "cause" for Banks's failure to develop the facts in state-court proceedings is informed by Strickler.12 In that case, Virginia prosecutors told the petitioner, prior to trial, that "the prosecutor's files were open to the petitioner's counsel," thus "there was no need for a formal [Brady] motion." 527 U. S., at 276, n. 14 (quoting App. in Strickler v. Greene, O. T. 1998, No. 98-5864, pp. 212-213 (brackets in original)). The prosecution file given to the Strickler petitioner, however, did not include several documents prepared by an "importan[t]" prosecution witness, recounting the witness' initial difficulty recalling the events to which she testified at the petitioner's trial. 527 U. S., at 273-275, 290. Those absent-from-the-file documents could have been used to impeach the witness. Id., at 273. In state-court postconviction proceedings, the Strickler petitioner had unsuccessfully urged ineffective assistance of trial counsel based on counsel's failure to move, pretrial, for Brady material. Answering that plea, the State asserted that a Brady motion would have been superfluous, for the prosecution had maintained an open file policy pursuant to which it had disclosed all Brady material. 527 U. S., at 276, n. 14, 278.
This Court determined that in the federal habeas proceedings, the Strickler petitioner had shown cause for his failure to raise a Brady claim in state court. 527 U. S., at 289. Three factors accounted for that determination:
"(a) the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence; (b) petitioner reasonably relied on the prosecution's open file policy as fulfilling the prosecution's duty to disclose such evidence; and (c) the [State] confirmed petitioner's reliance on the open file policy by asserting during state
12 Surprisingly, the Court of Appeals' per curiam opinion did not refer to Strickler v. Greene, 527 U. S. 263 (1999), the controlling precedent on the issue of "cause." App. to Pet. for Cert. A15-A33.
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