The dissent, written by Justice Brown, said the evidence was favorable and material to Brown's penalty phase and that the Louisiana Supreme Court misinterpreted and misapplied the Brady doctrine. The case was viewed as an opportunity for the high court to send a forceful message to a state with a history of abusing the doctrine, which requires prosecutors to hand over material favorable to the defense.
"I would have granted certiorari and summarily reversed," Justice Jackson said.
Brown and five other prisoners were part of a botched escape from Louisiana's State Penitentiary that resulted in the beating and stabbing death of Capt. David Knapps in 1999. Brown admitted he was part of the attempted escape but denied involvement in Knapps' killing.
One of Brown's co-defendants, Barry Edge, allegedly confessed to a fellow inmate that he and another escapee, Jeffrey Clark, were the ones who killed Knapps and never suggested Brown was involved in the fatal attack. Prosecutors had the inmate's statement prior to Brown's trial but did not disclose it to his attorneys. Brown argued that having that statement for his trial would have bolstered his assertion that he wasn't involved in Knapps death.
Prosecutors only shared the alleged jailhouse confession because they planned to use it against Edge at his trial.
"Had the jury found Brown less culpable than his co defendants, that finding could have served as a mitigating factor that spared him a sentence of death," Justice Jackson said.
Brown's counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
"We respect the Court's decision," Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul D. Connick Jr. said in a statement. His office prosecuted Brown.
Brown, who was sentenced to death in 2011, filed a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court after Louisiana's top court concluded the alleged confession was not favorable to Brown because it did not expressly say he was not present or not involved in Knapps' killing.
Justice Jackson said that reasoning is not supported by case law.
"The requirement that the withheld evidence must speak to or rule out the defendant's participation in order for it to be favorable is wholly foreign to our case law," Justice Jackson said. "And it appears that that erroneous requirement tainted the Louisiana Supreme Court's materiality analysis as well."
Had Brown's petition been accepted, it would have marked the fourth time since 1995 that Louisiana prosecutors had to defend their interpretation of Brady to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices reversed the past three Brady cases they reviewed from Louisiana — Kyles v. Whitley
in 1995, Smith v. Cain in 2012, and Wearry v. Cain in 2016.Each of those cases resulted in expansion of prosecutors' Brady requirements.
"We have repeatedly reversed lower courts — and Louisiana courts, in particular — for similar refusals to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment's mandate that favorable and material evidence in the government's possession be disclosed to the defense before trial," Justice Jackson said.
Justice Jackson said that the denial of Brown's cert petition "should in no way be construed as an endorsement of the lower court's legal reasoning."
"In my view, the Louisiana Supreme Court misinterpreted and misapplied our Brady jurisprudence in a manner that contravenes settled law," Justice Jackson said.
Mary McCord, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which filed an amicus brief on Brown's behalf, called the decision by the nation's top court to deny cert "alarming."
She said current and former prosecutors "from across the political spectrum" who signed on in support of the amicus brief agreed that the jailhouse statement should have been turned over to Brown's defense.
"To deny certiorari where the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to recognize the favorable and material nature of the withheld statement directly implicating two other people in the murder — and not the petitioner — is alarming in a case where the death penalty is at issue," McCord said in a statement Monday, emphasizing "other."
Brown is represented by Jeffrey L. Fisher of O'Melveny & Myers LLP and Letty Spring Di Giulio of the Law Office of Letty S. Di Giulio LLC.
The government is represented by Juliet L. Clark with the Jefferson Parish District Attorney's Office.
The case is David Brown v. Louisiana, case number 22-77, in the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States.
--Editing by Jill Coffey.
Updates with statement from Jefferson Parish district attorney.