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The ruling protects prosecutors who withhold "substantial exculpatory evidence" to obtain an indictment, as the role of the grand jury is not to determine guilt but to decide whether there is enough evidence of a crime; exculpatory evidence can be presented at trial. Justice
Stevens's dissent focused
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on the argument that a prosecutor's failure to present substantially-exculpatory evidence is a form of prosecutorial misconduct, but that nevertheless, the prosecutor need not "ferret out and present all evidence that could be used at trial to create a reasonable doubt as to defendant's guilt."
255:, which would require the dismissal of an indictment. The significance of the ruling lies not only in its definition of the duty of the prosecutor in regard to presenting exculpatory evidence before the grand jury but also in its definition of the grand jury's accusatory role.
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The question addressed by the court was whether a district court may properly dismiss an indictment when the prosecutor withheld "substantial exculpatory evidence" that could lead the grand jury to reject the indictment but does not necessarily rise to the level of
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A district court may not dismiss an otherwise valid indictment because the
Government failed to disclose to the grand jury "substantial exculpatory evidence" in its possession.
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Stevens, joined by
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United States
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public domain material from this U.S government document
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25:1992 United States Supreme Court case
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253:prosecutorial misconduct
50:Argued January 22, 1992
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207:U.S. Const. amend. V
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89:352; 1992
87:L. Ed. 2d
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185:Majority
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.