Wearry v. Cain (577 U.S. 385)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 7, 2016 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 577 U.S. 385 · 136 S. Ct. 1002
- Decided
- March 7, 2016
- Term
- October Term 2015
- Vote
- 6–2
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
PER CURIAM. Michael Wearry is on Louisiana's death row. Urging that the prosecution failed to disclose evidence supporting his innocence and that his counsel provided ineffective assistance at trial, Wearry unsuccessfully sought postconviction relief in state court. Contrary to the state postconviction court, we conclude that the prosecution's failure to disclose material evidence violated Wearry's due process rights. We reverse the state postconviction court's judgment on that account, and therefore do not reach Wearry's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. I A Sometime between 8:20 and 9:30 on the evening of April 4, 1998, Eric Walber was brutally murdered. Nearly two years after the murder, Sam Scott, at the time incarcerated, contacted authorities and implicated Michael Wearry. Scott initially reported that he had been friends with the victim; that he was at work the night of the murder; that the victim had come looking for him but had instead run into Wearry and four others; and that Wearry and the others had later confessed to shooting and driving over the victim before leaving his body on Blahut Road. In fact, the victim had not been shot, and his body had been found on Crisp Road. Scott changed his account of the crime over the course of four later statements, each of which differed from the others in material ways. By the time Scott testified as the State's star…
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