Giles v. Maryland/Concurrence Fortas

Mr. Justice FORTAS, concurring in the judgment.

I concur in the Court's judgment in this immensely troubling case, but I do so for the reasons which led the Montgomery County Circuit Court to order a new trial.

On petitioners' motion for post-conviction relief, Judge Moorman of the Circuit Court sustained the claim that the prosecution had violated their federally protected right to due process of law when it failed to disclose to defense counsel evidence, known to the prosecution, concerning two incidents which occurred about one month after the crime charged to them and four months prior to trial. These incidents were: (1) the prosecutrix' sexual encounter with two boys at a party, followed by the filing and eventual dropping of a rape charge; and (2) her attempted suicide within hours of the foregoing incident and her ensuing hospitalization for psychiatric examination. The Circuit Court ruled that this information could 'be reasonably considered admissible and useful to the defense,' that in consequence the prosecution was under a duty to disclose, and that its omission to do so required a new trial.

The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed. It held that, even if admissible, the evidence in question was insufficiently 'exculpatory' to warrant a new trial. The attempted suicide was shunted aside on the ground that its 'probative value' was not such as to affect either the competence or credibility of the prosecutrix as a witness. Both it and the rape claim were disposed of on the assertion that 'specific acts of misconduct' are not admissible to impeach credibility, and that 'the only possible use of the facts surrounding the alleged rape claim would be for purposes of showing the unchastity of the prosecutrix, a fact that was already known to the defense at the time of the rape trial.'

Judges Oppenheimer and Hammond dissented. They noted that the alleged rape claim and its abandonment might well have been useful in corroborating the petitioners' account of what happened, that no Maryland evidentiary rule rendered inadmissible in a rape prosecution evidence that the prosecutrix suffered from a mental or emotional disturbance short of 'insanity,' and that in any event these bits of information might have furnished the defense with important leads to other and more potent evidence. The dissenters asserted that the majority erroneously substituted its appraisal of the weight to be attached to the suppressed evidence for a jury's possible evaluation, and that it erred in applying too stringent a test of admissibility.

I do not agree that the State may be excused from its duty to disclose material facts known to it prior to trial solely because of a conclusion that they would not be admissible at trial. The State's obligation is not to convict, but to see that, so far as possible, truth emerges. This is also the ultimate statement of its responsibility to provide a fair trial under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. No respectable interest of the State is served by its concealment of information which is material, generously conceived, to the case, including all possible defenses.

This is not to say that convictions ought to be reversed on the ground that information merely repetitious, cumulative, or embellishing of facts otherwise known to the defense or presented to the court, or without importance to the defense for purposes of the preparation of the case or for trial was not disclosed to defense counsel. It is not to say that the State has an obligation to communicate preliminary, challenged, or speculative information. But this is not that case. Petitioners were on trial for their lives. The information was specific, factual, and concrete, although its implications may be highly debatable. The charge was rape, and, although the circumstances of this case seem to negate the possibility of consent, the information which the State withheld was directly related to that defense. Petitioners' fate turned on whether the jury believed their story that the prosecutrix had consented, rather than her claim that she had been raped. In this context, it was a violation of due process of law for the prosecution to withhold evidence that a month after the crime of which petitioners were accused the prosecutrix had intercourse with two men in circumstances suggesting consent on her part, and that she told a policeman-but later retracted the charge-that they had raped her. The defense should have been advised of her suicide attempt and commitment for psychiatric observation, for even if these should be construed as merely products of the savage mistreatment of the girl by petitioners, rather than as indicating a question as to the girl's credibility, the defense was entitled to know.

The story of the prosecutrix is a tragic one. But our total lack of sympathy for the kind of physical assault which is involved here may not lead us to condone state suppression of information which might be useful to the defense.

With regret but under compulsion of the nature and impact of the error committed, I would vacate the judgment of conviction and require the case to be retried. In view of the conclusions of my Brethren, however, I concur in the judgment of the Court sending this case back to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration.

ADDENDUM: My Brother HARLAN has addressed a section of his dissent to my concurring opinion. This discloses a basic difference between us with respect to the State's responsibility under the fair-trial requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. I believe that deliberate concealment and nondisclosure by the State are not to be distinguished in principle from misrepresentation. This Court so held in Brady v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Mr. Justice HARLAN concedes that the State may not knowingly use perjured testimony or allow it to remain uncorrected. He asserts that this satisfies 'in full' the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, and suggests that an extension of these principles is neither necessary nor advisable. This suggests that the State is never obligated to take the initiative to disclose evidence unless its nature is such as to impeach evidence that the State has offered. I assume that Mr. Justice HARLAN would apply this principle, even though the information might, in the hands of defense counsel, spell the difference between death and exoneration of the defendant. I cannot subscribe to this. A criminal trial is not a game in which the State's function is to outwit and entrap its quarry. The State's pursuit is justice, not a victim. If it has in its exclusive possession specific, concrete evidence which is not merely cumulative or embellishing and which may exonerate the defendant or be of material importance to the defense-regardless of whether it relates to testimony which the State has caused to be given at the trial-the State is obliged to bring it to the attention of the court and the defense. For example, let us assume that the State possesses information that blood was found on the victim, and that this blood is of a type which does not match that of the accused or of the victim. Let us assume that no related testimony was offered by the State. I understand my Brother HARLAN's comments to mean that he would not require the State to disclose this information. He would apparently regard Miller v. Pate, 386 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 785, 17 L.Ed.2d 690, as the outer limit of the State's duty. There the prosecution dramatically used a pair of shorts, misrepresented as saturated with blood, to secure a conviction. I cannot acquiesce that this is the end of the State's duty under the Constitution. Nondisclosure-deliberate withholding-of important information of the type described, which is in the exclusive possession of the State is, in my judgment, not reconcilable with the concept of a fair trial and with the Due Process Clause. I can readily see that differences of opinion might exist as to whether the nature of particular evidence is such that nondisclosure of it should result in setting aside a conviction. But I do not accept the notion that only where the effect of withholding evidence is to allow perjured testimony to stand uncorrected is there a duty to disclose. In my view, a supportable conviction requires something more than that the State did not lie. It implies that the prosecution has been fair and honest and that the State had disclosed all information known to it which may have a crucial or important effect on the outcome.

The newly amended Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure has little to do with the matter now before the Court. On its face, the Rule is directed to the relatively limited problem of pretrial discovery and inspection in the federal courts. Whether Rule 16 is adequate even for its purposes is the subject of differences of opinion. But it does not purport to exhaust the prosecution's duty. Mr. Justice HARLAN apparently finds no inconsistency between proscription of the prosecution's knowing use or acquiescence in the use of perjured testimony and Rule 16's silence on that subject. I find none in the requirement, recognized by this Court in Brady v. State of Maryland, supra, that the State apprise the defendant of information of the sort described herein, and the Rule's omission of such a requirement. My point relates, not to the defendant's discovery of the prosecution's case for purposes of preparation or avoidance of surprise, which is dealt with in Rule 16, but with the State's constitutional duty, as I see it, voluntarily to disclose material in its exclusive possession which is exonerative or helpful to the defense-which the State will not affirmatively use to prove guilt-and which it should not conceal. Brady involved neither the knowing use of perjured testimony nor acquiescence in its use. Nevertheless, both the Maryland Court of Appeals and this Court concluded that the prosecutor's conduct in withholding information material to guilt or punishment, information which defense counsel had unsuccessfully requested, violated due process. Although this Court included in its statement of the controlling principle a reference to counsel's request-'We now hold that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution * *  * ' -I see no reason to make the result turn on the adventitious circumstance of a request. If the defense does not know of the existence of the evidence, it may not be able to request its production. A murder trial-indeed any criminal proceeding-is not a sporting event.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice BLACK, Mr. Justice CLARK and Mr. Justice STEWART join, dissenting.

The disposition of this case, the product of three opinions, none of which commands the votes of a majority of the Court, is wholly out of keeping with the constitutional limitations upon this Court's role in the review of state criminal cases. For reasons that follow, I dissent.

On the basis of the trial record, it would be difficult to imagine charges more convincingly proved than were those against these three youths for raping this teenage girl. Following conviction, information came to light which seriously reflected on the sexual habits of the girl and on the stability of her character. These revelations were made the basis of a state post-conviction proceeding, premised on the claim that in failing to disclose these data at the time of trial the prosecution had been guilty of a deliberate suppression of material evidence and the knowing use of perjured testimony. The post-conviction judge found against those claims, but nonetheless ordered a new trial, holding that the data, which he deemed would have been admissible and useful to the defense, should have been disclosed by the authorities. The Court of Appeals of Maryland, holding as a matter of state law that this material was not such as to justify a new trial, reversed. This Court, without finding any constitutional flaw in the state proceedings, and indeed expressly recognizing that upon the facts as found by the state courts, petitioners' nondisclosure claim gives rise to no federal question under existing law, now returns the case to the Maryland Court of Appeals for what amounts to nothing more than reconsideration.

The plurality and one of the concurring opinions urge entirely different reasons for remanding the case in this fashion, and will thus oblige the courts of Maryland to reconsider a series of wholly unrelated issues. The plurality opinion and my Brother WHITE'S concurring opinion have only two common denominators: neither can identify any federal basis for this disposition, and both are concerned with questions which have been repeatedly considered by the state courts. Each of the three opinions requires discrete treatment, but I have concluded, for the reasons which follow, that none of them offers any basis on which the Court may properly return this case to the Maryland courts.

I turn first to the reasons advanced by the plurality opinion. The unusual disposition made of this case by the plurality is bottomed upon materials entirely outside the record before us, furnished to this Court after the case was submitted, under the leverage of inquiries put from the bench during the argument. The materials are two preindictment police reports, the Montgomery County Officers' Report and the Supplementary Offense Report. It seems to me entirely improper for this Court to 'retry' state criminal cases in its own courtroom, and then to return them for reconsideration in light of materials 'discovered' outside the record during that process. Even apart from that regrettable practice, the remand of this case is the more remarkable because the materials on which the plurality relies are not in any sense newly discovered. The fact is that these police reports have played a significant role throughout the state court proceedings. They were made available to defense counsel at the original trial stage. They were given to and considered by the trial judge at the time of sentence. And although demanded by the new defense counsel in the post-conviction proceeding, their production was denied under a state procedural rule which apparently was not contested in the state appeal, and which is in no way now questioned by this Court from a federal standpoint. In consequence, the ultimate rationale for the plurality's disposition of the case is itself specious.

The use now made of these police reports is equally unsatisfactory. The discrepancies which the plurality finds between these reports and the trial testimony relate to two episodes. First, the girl, Joyce, and her companion, Foster, apparently initially told the police that they were having sexual intercourse in their car when they noticed the presence of the other car, whereas at trial Foster intimated that he and the girl were simply sitting in the rear seat. He denied elsewhere that he and his friends had brought Joyce out to the spot to have sexual relations with her. Second, one of the police reports is construed to suggest that Joyce had said that John Giles did not penetrate her, whereas her trial testimony was that all three men had raped her. The plurality argues that these discrepancies, if known to the defense, might have been used to establish the girl's reputation for promiscuity, to attack the credibility of prosecution witnesses, and possibly to exonerate petitioner John Giles entirely. It even suggests that the defense might have shown a deliberate suppression of evidence or a conscious failure to correct perjured testimony.

The short answer to all this is, of course, that the record makes plain that defense counsel at the trial was given access to these police reports and thus must be taken to have been aware of the very discrepancies of which the plurality now undertakes to make so much. There is no basis whatever in the evidence before us for the plurality's intimation that the reports seen by counsel may not have been those given to this Court or for its thinly veiled suggestion that in not making use of the supplementary report counsel may have been incompetent or worse.

Beyond this, a more careful examination than the plurality has given these reports and the record will itself dissipate the aura of suspicion and conjecture with which this case has now been surrounded. The plurality first suggests that perjured testimony may have been knowingly utilized by the prosecution to establish penetration of the girl by John Giles. Joyce initially testified at a pretrial hearing that only Johnson and James Giles had intercourse with her. Later in the same hearing she included John Giles, apparently with the explanation that she had first believed that rape requires emission as well as penetration. At trial she testified very specifically that John Giles had effected penetration. On cross-examination, she conceded that her first accounts both to the police and at the preliminary hearing indicated that only two men had intercourse with her. She again suggested that she had been confused. In contrast, the police officers testified at trial that Joyce had said in questioning on July 21 that John Giles had intercourse with her. The supposed inconsistencies among all these accounts were plain both to defense counsel and to the jury.

Petitioners argued at the post-conviction proceeding that the police testimony was perjured, and that Joyce had initially said that John Giles did not attack her. They offered, in addition to Joyce's own admissions at trial, statements from petitioners' father, mother, and sister that a policeman had first mentioned only two assailants to them. In a deposition hearing, Joyce said that she did not recall ever conceding at trial that only two men had intercourse with her. Judge Moorman concluded that Joyce's terminological confusion adequately explained the supposed discrepancies with the police testimony. Although petitioners have not argued this issue here, the plurality now points to the supplementary report to suggest again that the police evidence might have been perjured, and remands for what it quite evidently hopes will result in another hearing on that issue.

It seems apparent that the references to this issue in the supplementary report are entirely equivocal. The report contains only three references to Joyce's statements on this question. First, Joyce is reported to have replied, when asked how many had intercourse with her, that 'The bigger one (John) tried first, then the other two.' Again, the statement is attributed to her, in the third person, that John 'tried to have intercourse with her but was unable to do so.' Finally, she is reported to have said that John Giles 'tried to insert' but 'could not get' an erection. The report indicates that John Giles was the first to begin to remove Joyce's clothing, that he kissed her, and that he 'tried' for some 10 minutes.

It must first be plain that although these references are brief and imprecise, nothing in them necessarily excludes the conclusion that John Giles achieved penetration, however slight. Further, it must be recognized that the form and language of the supplementary report indicate quite clearly that it was prepared rapidly, under the urgency of the events, and without any expectation that its every word would now be weighed and balanced. Little wonder that the plurality's diligent pursuit of uncertainty has unearthed phrases which, so it supposes, permit some room for ambiguity.

Finally, it must be remembered that in the report, at the pretrial hearing, and at the trial itself, the police, the witnesses, and even counsel employed interchangeably various terms of very dissimilar meaning to describe the acts committed upon the girl by the defendants. The post-conviction proceeding court expressly found that Joyce for one was confused by this elusive terminology, and that this confusion explained any discrepancies in her various accounts of these events. This finding was not disturbed or even questioned by the Maryland Court of Appeals. Nonetheless, the plurality attempts to escape it with the suggestion, surrounded by cautious disclaimers, that it may possibly have been mistaken. The plurality offers three reasons for this suggestion. It first intimates that the finding may be mistaken because the State proffered this explanation only at the post-conviction proceeding. This is entirely unpersuasive; Joyce's confusion was apparent at least as early as the original preliminary hearing, and was not there offered by the State as an explanation, but instead became obvious to those present simply from the terms of Joyce's testimony. The plurality next suggests that Joyce at trial expressed confusion only as to the names of her assailants, and not about this terminology. This is twice deficient: it ignores that the terms of Joyce's testimony were perfectly well known to the state courts which made and accepted the finding, and it is bottomed on an unreasonable construction of the testimony.

Lastly, the plurality contends that Joyce is not shown by the supplementary report to have been confused. There are two obvious answers. First, this assumes that the report precisely reproduces the words used by Joyce herself to describe these events, and that these words may therefore be sifted and weighed to establish Joyce's familiarity with this terminology. This is unsupported by the report itself, which contains no formal statements, and is instead an informal jumble of undigested information collected by the police as they conducted their investigation. At no point can the reader be entirely certain whether its words are the witness' or those selected by the police interrogators to digest the information given them. Finally, the plurality overlooks that there is uncontested testimony that Joyce was plainly and pertinently confused at the preliminary hearing. The plurality's speculation that she may or may not have been confused at one stage of this lengthy proceeding can scarcely vitiate the firm finding of the Maryland courts that she was confused at another and more crucial stage, and that this confusion explained any discrepancies in her accounts of these events. In sum, I find the plurality's oblique efforts to cast doubt on the finding of the state courts entirely unpersuasive.

Moreover, these references in the supplementary report must be viewed in light of the other police report furnished this Court, the Montgomery County Officers' Report. That report makes quite clear that Joyce indicated at the scene that John Giles 'had entered her.' The plurality seeks to explain the terms of this report with two suggestions. First, it intimates that the report may be unreliable because it is a summary of Joyce's statements 'immediately after the incident.' I should have thought that it would therefore be all the more important. At most, the plurality's intimation is an acknowledgment of the weaknesses of both reports. Neither report was intended to serve as a formal and precise record; it is therefore extraordinarily hazardous to pyramid, as the plurality has done, hypotheses upon strained constructions of the reports' most abbreviated references. This simply re-emphasizes the wisdom of the State's exclusionary rule, and the corresponding impropriety of the plurality's circumvention of that rule. Second, the plurality suggests that the report leaves unexplained the police testimony that Joyce had said that all three men had intercourse with her. This assumes first that the words 'gave up' in the report indicate that Joyce meant that James Giles did not penetrate, when in light of the other accounts given by both James Giles and Joyce, it could only have meant that he did not reach emission. More important, the plurality overlooks that the only questions which have ever been even intimated about whether any of the three youths failed to penetrate the girl center entirely on John Giles, and this is a plan statement in the police reports that Joyce had informed the police at least once that John Giles penetrated her. The plurality opinion cannot, and does not, deny that this is the most unequivocal reference in either report to John's actions, and that it makes plain that Joyce reported that John had penetrated her. Given the ambiguity of the references to John Giles in the supplementary report, Joyce's clear statement in the Officers' Report that John Giles had penetrated, and the no less plain statements in the supplementary report from Joyce, James Giles and Johnson that James and Johnson also penetrated, I am again unable to understand how it can be thought that there might be some basis for the attribution of perjury on this score to the police witnesses.

The asserted discrepancies among the various accounts given of John Giles' participation by Joyce and the other prosecution witnesses have been forcefully argued at each stage of this case, they have been painstakingly considered by the state courts, and I can see no warrant for inviting those courts to examine the issue anew.

The plurality next suggests that the prosecution may also have been privy to the use of perjured testimony or guilty of a deliberate suppression of evidence in relation to what the girl and Foster were doing in the car just before their assailants came upon them. This is entirely insubstantial. Foster and the girl were never directly asked at trial, and did not volunteer, to describe what they had done while awaiting the return of their friends. They were not asked if they had intercourse. The question was only once even inferentially suggested. Foster was first asked 'What did you three boys take Joyce out there for that night?' and replied 'I told you we were going to meet some friends up there and go swimming.' The next question was 'You didn't take her out there to have sexual relations with her, yourself, did you?' and Foster replied 'No.' It would doubtless have been more forthright had Foster interjected that, whatever his original expectations, they had in fact had relations; nonetheless, his explanation was an adequate response to the precise question asked. In short, although the evidence was as to this point incomplete, it was, so far as it went, consistent with the police report.

I do not see how it can be suggested that the prosecutor's conduct in this instance was constitutionally vulnerable. First and foremost, the contents of the police reports on this episode were made available to the defense, and counsel elected to make nothing of them. Second, the omitted fact in Foster's testimony could not have had 'an effect on the outcome of the trial.' Napue v. People of State of Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 272, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 1179, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217. Initially, it is very doubtful that this evidence would have been admissible at trial. Under the law of Maryland, specific acts of misconduct are not admissible to impeach a witness' credibility. Rau v. State, 133 Md. 613, 105 A. 867. Further, since the evidence at trial was merely silent on these issues, and did not include inconsistent statements, this evidence presumably would not have been admissible on that basis to impeach the credibility of these witnesses. Finally, although Maryland permits the admission of evidence of a prosecutrix' general reputation for immorality, it does not permit evidence of specific acts of intercourse. Shartzer v. State, 63 Md. 149; Humphreys v. State, 227 Md. 115, 175 A.2d 777. The Court of Appeals of Maryland has in this very case plainly said that 'a prosecutrix cannot be asked whether she had previously had intercourse with a person other than the accused.' Giles v. State, 229 Md. 370, 380, 183 A.2d 359, 363. The evidence with which the plurality is concerned therefore cannot 'reasonably be considered admissible,' Griffin v. United States, 87 U.S.App.D.C. 172, 175, 183 F.2d 990, 993, under the law of Maryland. Far more important from a federal standpoint, evidence of Foster's relations with the girl, even if admissible, could not have been substantially relevant to the principal factual issues at the trial. Its omission did not discolor the meaning of controlling facts, as did the episode involved in Alcorta v. State of Texas, 355 U.S. 28, 78 S.Ct. 103, 2 L.Ed.2d 9; nor did it measurably strengthen a witness' credibility, as did the one involved in Napue v. People of State of Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 79 S.Ct. 1173. It would at most have given the defense another inconclusive intimation of Joyce's promiscuity, and this could scarcely have sufficed to change the trial's outcome.

The plurality ultimately seeks to justify its disposition of this case in terms of the rules by which this Court has given recognition to the different roles played under the Constitution by federal and state courts. These efforts are entirely unpersuasive. In essence, the plurality has first brought these police reports into the case through an informal discovery rule of its own creation which flies into the face of an unassailed state rule which excluded the reports, and now has invited the state courts to reconsider the case unrestricted by the local rule and not confined to the 'Constitution's relevant commands.' This scarcely fits the plurality's professed objective to 'minimize federal-state tensions.' And plainly this course finds no support in cases in which the Court has remanded for further consideration in light of a supervening event. Nothing here is remotely analogous to the change in state law that occurred in Bell v. State of Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 84 S.Ct. 1814, 12 L.Ed.2d 822, or to the intervening judgments of this Court that took place in Patterson v. State of Alabama, 294 U.S. 600, 55 S.Ct. 575, 79 L.Ed. 1082, and in Dorchy v. State of Kansas, 264 U.S. 286, 44 S.Ct. 323, 68 L.Ed. 686. What is now done is explicable only on the premise that this Court possesses some sort of supervisory power over state courts, a premise which of course traverses the most fundamental axioms of our federal system.

The rationale offered for remand by my Brother WHITE'S opinion is equally unsatisfactory. At bottom, that rationale consists of the supposition that the presiding judge at the state postconviction proceeding may possibly have misconstrued applicable Maryland law, and may therefore have improperly excluded testimony relevant to the mental condition of the prosecuting witness. My Brother WHITE does not suggest, as I think he cannot, that any of the rulings which he suspects to have been erroneous were deficient under any known federal standard. All of them at most involve, even under his premises, misapplications of Maryland law. Each of these rulings was plain on the face of the record presented to, and carefully considered by, the Maryland Court of Appeals; all the materials pertinent to the evaluation of these rulings were before that court at the time of its review.

The court did not, of course, explicitly determine the various questions now posed, but it did, as my Brother WHITE acknowledges, examine the record to decide whether Joyce might have been suffering from mental illness, or whether she was otherwise incompetent as a witness. Such an examination must inevitably have obliged the court to assess the very rulings and restrictions which it must now reassess upon remand. Despite this, neither the majority nor the dissenting opinion below expressed any doubt that these rulings were entirely dorrect. At a minimum, a remand thus needlessly prolongs an already protracted case; unfortunately, it may also appear to endorse the substitution of the speculations of this Court on the content of state law for the conclusions of the State's highest court, as basis for the return of a case to the state courts for reconsideration.

In any event, the hesitations expressed by Mr. Justice WHITE'S opinion about the scope of the evidence concerning Joyce's mental condition appear unwarranted on the record before us. The record makes plain that the court at the post-conviction proceeding permitted the admission of substantially more evidence on this issue than that opinion might be taken to suggest. First, the presiding judge permitted Dr. Connor, the attending physician, to state his diagnosis of Joyce's mental condition. In addition, Dr. Connor was allowed to indicate that he agreed with the diagnosis described to him by the consulting physician, Dr. Doudoumopoulis. Dr. Connor was not, as that opinion notes, permitted to describe that diagnosis, but the court supplemented its ruling with the statement to defense counsel that 'I would admit it if you put it in the right manner.' Both Dr. Connor and Dr. Doudoumopoulis were allowed in a deposition hearing to state whether they had discussed Joyce's condition with various officials of Prince George's and Montgomery Counties. Further, the court permitted another psychiatrist, Dr. Solomon, to state, in reply to a hypothetical question asked by defense counsel, his opinion of the mental condition of a girl in Joyce's circumstances. In addition, Dr. Solomon was permitted to describe the basis for his views, to offer his opinion as to what her mental condition might have been some three months later (the interval before the trial in this case), and to state that a girl in these circumstances warranted a psychiatric examination. Dr. Solomon was prevented from speculating only whether this condition might have affected the girl's credibility as a witness, an issue the court noted, which is for the jury, and not an expert witness, to determine. Finally, petitioners adduced very substantial evidence of Joyce's sexual history, all of which was pertinent to the court's determination whether she might have been suffering from mental illness.

Perhaps more evidence of Joyce's mental condition, and of the knowledge of Montgomery County authorities of that condition, could conceivably have been introduced; but it is true of all criminal prosecutions, federal and state, that some fragments of fact broadly pertinent to the issues of the trial do not reach the record. In any event, the petitioners themselves have apparently never challenged any of these rulings either before the Maryland Court of Appeals or in this Court. I can find no basis on the record before us for remanding this case simply in the hope that rulings of state law may now be held to have been improper, and thus that unknown additional evidence, which may or may not be pertinent and substantial, may then be admitted. This practice is warranted neither by the facts of this case nor by the role given to this Court by the Constitution in the review of state criminal convictions.

My Brother FORTAS' proposed resolution of the case is, with great respect, no more satisfactory, although he would, to be sure, base its disposition upon an asserted federal question. His reasoning, as I see it, rests at bottom upon quite fundamental objections to the character and balance of our adversary system of criminal justice. Neither those objections nor the conclusions which stem from them form any part of the disposition made of this case, in which he joins; it would accordingly be inappropriate for me to respond in more than relatively summary fashion. I content myself, therefore, with outlining the reasons why I cannot subscribe to my Brother FORTAS' approach.

As I understand him, my Brother FORTAS believes that state prosecuting officials are compelled by the Fourteenth Amendment to disclose to defense counsel any information 'which is material, generously conceived the the case, including all possible defenses.' This would include all information which is 'exonerative or helpful.' This standard would demand markedly broader disclosures than this Court has ever held the Fourteenth Amendment to require. The Court has held since Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 55 S.Ct. 340, 79 L.Ed. 791, that a State's knowing use of perjured testimony denies a fair trial to the accused. Mooney has been understood to include cases in which a State knowingly permits false testimony to remain uncorrected. Alcorta v. State of Texas, 355 U.S. 28, 78 S.Ct. 103, 2 L.Ed.2d 9; Napue v. People of State of Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217. The standard applied in such cases has been whether the testimony 'may have had an effect on the outcome of the trial.' Napue v. People of State of Illinois, supra, 360 U.S. at 272, 79 S.Ct at 1179. These cases were very recently followed and applied in Miller v. Pate, 386 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 785, 17 L.Ed.2d 690. Apart from dicta in Brady v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, the Court has never gone further. Nor, in my view, does the Constitution demand more. This standard is well calculated to prevent the kinds of prosecutorial misconduct which vitiate the very basis of our adversary system, and yet to provide a firm line which halts short of broad, constitutionally required, discovery rules. It both guarantees the fundamental fairness of state criminal trials, thereby satisfying in full the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, and preserves intact the States' ultimate authority for the conduct of their systems of criminal justice. None of these advantages adheres to the standard suggested by my Brother FORTAS. His reasoning must inevitably result in the imposition upon the States through the Constitution of broad discovery rules. Those rules would entirely alter the character and balance of our present systems of criminal justice.

The extraordinary breadth of the standard apparently urged by Mr. Justice FORTAS becomes more plain when that standard is measured against Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, applicable in federal criminal trials. Discovery under Rule 16, even as now amended, is restricted by a number of carefully drawn limitations, each intended to 'guard against possible abuses.' Notes of the Advisory Committee on Rules, 39 F.R.D. 176. The defendant is permitted only to obtain certain categories of materials, and he must in each case first move the court for their production. These limitations fall far short of the standard urged by my Brother FORTAS. Under his view the information obtainable by the defendant could not be restricted by its character or source; failure to disclose could be justified, post hoc, only if the information cannot be deemed 'material,' generously judged. Nor could the defendant be obliged to demand disclosure; as my Brother FORTAS' opinion emphasizes, the burden must instead be placed upon the prosecutor, on threat of subsequent reversal of any conviction, spontaneously to proffer all that might prove 'helpful' to the defense. The effect which the rule urged here would thus have on this federal and similar state discovery rules would be entirely unlike that of Mooney and the cases which stem from it. Mooney simply imposes sanctions upon specified forms of prosecutorial misconduct; Mr. Justice FORTAS' rule would in contrast create wide constitutional obligations to disclose which, whether operative before or during trial, would entirely swallow the more narrow discovery rules which now prevail even in federal criminal trials.

Issues of the obligatory disclosure of information ultimately raise fundamental questions of the proper nature and characteristics of the criminal trial. These questions surely are entirely too important for this Court to implant in our laws by constitutional decree answers which, without full study, might appear warranted in a particular case. There are few areas which call more for prudent experimentation and continuing study. I can find nothing either in the Constitution or in this case which would compel, or justify, the imposition upon the States of the very broad disclosure rule now proposed.

The unarticulated basis of today's disposition, and of the disparate reasons which accompany it, is quite evidently nothing more than the Court's uneasiness with these convictions, engendered by post-trial indications of the promiscuity of this unfortunate girl. Unable to discover a constitutional infirmity and unwilling to affirm the convictions, the Court simply returns the case to the Maryland Court of Appeals, in hopes that, despite the plurality's repeated disclaimers, that court will share the Court's discomfort and discover a formula under which these convictions can be reversed. The Court is unable even to agree upon a state law basis with which to explain its remand. I cannot join such a disposition. We on this bench are not free to disturb a state conviction simply for reasons that might be permissible were we sitting on the state court of last resort. Nor are we free to interject our individual sympathies into the administration of state criminal justice. We are instead constrained to remain within the perimeter drawn for this Court by the Constitution.

I cannot find a tenable constitutional ground on which these convictions could be disturbed, and would therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Maryland.