Giles v. State of Maryland

• Decision Date: 20 February 1967
• Docket Number: No. 27,27
• Citation: 386 U.S. 66,87 S.Ct. 793,17 L.Ed.2d 737
• Parties: James V. GILES et al., Petitioners, v. STATE OF MARYLAND
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

386 U.S. 66

87 S.Ct. 793

17 L.Ed.2d 737

James V. GILES et al., Petitioners,

v STATE OF MARYLAND.

No. 27.

Argued Oct. 12, 1966.

Decided Feb. 20, 1967.

Joseph Forer, Washington, D.C., for petitioners.

Donald Needle and Robert C. Murphy, Baltimore, Md., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice DOUGLAS join.

In December 1961, petitioners, who are brothers, were convicted of rape of a 16-year-old girl after trial by jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland. In May 1964, petitioners brought this proceeding under Maryland's Post-Conviction Procedure Act, Md.Ann.Code Art. 27, § 645A et seq. (1966 Supp.).¹ Their peti- tion alleged that the prosecution denied them due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by suppressing evidence favorable to them, and by the knowing use of prejured testimony against them. An evidentiary hearing was had before Montgomery Circuit Judge Moorman who, in an unreported opinion, rule that the proofs did not sustain the allegation of bad faith or knowing use of perjured testimony by the prosecution, but did establish the suppression of evidence which, although not in bad faith, constituted a denial of due process. He therefore ordered a new trial. The Court of Appeals of Maryland, sitting en banc, reversed, two judges dissenting. State v. Giles, 239 Md. 458, 212 A.2d 101. We granted certiorari. 383 U.S. 941, 86 S.Ct. 1194, 16 L.Ed.2d 205. We would vacate the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals and remand to that court for further proceedings.

The rape allegedly occurred about midnight, July 20, 1961, near Rocky Gorge, a swimming and fishing spot on the Patuxent River, in a secluded, wooded area of Montgomery County. The petitioners swam and fished there from early evening with Joseph Johnson² and John Bowie. The prosecutrix came there by automobile shortly before midnight with her date, Stewart Foster, and two other young men. Their car ran out of gasoline near Bowie's parked car. The girl and Foster remained in the car while the other young men went for gasoline.

The girl and Foster were the State's principal witnesses. They testified that they had been sitting in the back seat of the car for some 15 minutes after the two young men left when a noise near Bowie's car attracted their attention. They saw petitioners and their companions loading something into Bowie's car. Bowie drove away and petitioners and Johnson approached the stranded car. Foster rolled up the windows and locked the doors. The girl and Foster testified that the three demanded his money and his girl and smashed the car windows with rocks to open the car doors. Foster unlocked the door on his side and told the girl to get out her side and run while he held off the three. Foster was knocked unconscious when he left the car. The girl ran into the woods followed by John Giles who caught up with her when she tripped and fell. Petitioner James Giles and Johnson joined them a few minutes later. She testified that, when one of the trio attempted to remove her clothes, she disrobed herself below the waist and submitted to all three youths without resistance because of fear.

Both petitioners testified in their own defense. Their version of the events was that the three young men approached the car and asked Foster for a cigarette, that Foster responded with epithets and reached down as if to pick up a gun or other weapon, and that they broke the windows to prevent his getting it. They said that they did not know it was a girl who fled into the woods. Petitioner John Giles testified that when he caught up with her, she offered to submit to him if he would help her escape from the others but that he declined. Petitioner James Giles testified that when he and Johnson joined the couple, the girl told the three that she had had relations with 16 or 17 boys that week and two or three more wouldn't make any difference, that she disrobed herself and invited all three of them to have relations with her, and that he and Johnson, but not petitioner John Giles, had relations with her. Both petitioners testified that the girl said that if they were caught in the woods she would have to say she had been raped because 'she was on a year's probation' and 'was in trouble.'

The credibility of the witnesses was thus important to the outcome of the case. The Court of Appeals recognized this in affirming the convictions on direct review: 'There was some evidence tending to indicate consent on the part of the prosecuting witness, which, if believed by the trier of facts, would have been a complete defense to the charge of rape.' Giles v. State, 229 Md., at 381, 183 A.2d, at 364.³ Credibility was also critical on the issue whether, in any event, petitioner John Biles had relations with her, as she testified, or had not, as the petitioners testified.

The evidence allegedly suppressed consisted first, of the fact that in a proceeding pending on June 20 in the Juvenile Court for Prince George's County, a caseworker had recommended probation for the girl because she was beyond parental control. Also allegedly suppressed were the facts concerning an occurrence in Prince George's County at a party on the night of August 26, 1961, five weeks after the alleged rape, and over three months before the trial. The girl had sexual relations with two men at the party, and later that night took an overdose of pills and was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward of Prince George's General Hospital for nine days as an attempted suicide. She told a friend who visited her at the hospital that the two men had raped her. The friend told her parents who reported this to Montgomery County Police Lieutenant Whalen, head of the investigation for the State's Attorney into the charge against petitioners. Lieutenant Whalen advised the mother that he had no jurisdiction of Prince George's County offenses, after which the girl's father filed a formal charge of rape against the two men with the Prince George's County authorities. A Prince George's County police officer, Sergeant Wheeler, interviewed the girl at the hospital. She refused to say she had been raped. She told the officer she had previously had relations with one of the men and also that in the previous two years she had had sexual relations with numerous boys and men, some of whom she did not know.

Finally, the prosecution allegedly suppressed facts concerning a hearing conducted in the Montgomery County Juvenile Court on September 5, 1961, apparently the day after the girl's release from her nine-day confinement in the psychiatric ward at Prince George's General Hospital, and three months before the trial. The hearing resulted in the commitment of the girl to the Montrose School for Girls where she remained for some time. Lieutenant Whalen testified that he had arranged this hearing with the Montgomery County Juvenile Court authorities, although the girl was a resident of Prince George's County. He testified that the girl's mother had complained to him that 'the boys in Prince George's County were harassing the girl, driving back and forth past the house all hours,' and that he arranged the proceeding 'to place the girl in some place for protective custody.' The Montgomery Juvenile Court record discloses, however, that the hearing also inquired into the necessity for the girl's confinement as a juvenile 'out of parental control and living in circumstances endangering her well-being.' The girl testified at the hearing that she had taken pills because she felt that 'she wanted to die and there was nothing to live for.'

The petitioners' contention was that all of this evidence tended to support their testimony and discredit that of the girl and Foster and might, therefore, have produced an acquittal or, at least, a reduction of penalty.⁴ They also argued that knowledge of it by the defense would have provided valuable leads to evidence supporting a conclusion that the girl testified falsely in denying that she consented to relations.

The petitioners were represented at the trial by appointed counsel.⁵ He testified at the post-conviction proceeding that he knew nothing before the trial of the incidents of August 26, the girl's suicide attempt, her confinement in the hospital, the psychiatrist's diagnosis of her mental illness, or of her commitment to the Montrose School for Girls. He testified that he had tried, before August 26, to interview the girl at her home but that her mother told him 'she talked to Lt. Whalen and he told her not to discuss the case with us.' He also testified that, based on petitioners' story to him that the girl had told them she was on probation, he inquired of the Juvenile Courts of both Prince George's County and Montgomery County whether there were any proceedings in those courts concerning the girl and was told records of such proceedings were not released.

Judge Moorman found 'that the State withheld from the defense and suppressed both the evidence concerning the second rape complaint of the prosecutrix and the evidence relative to her alleged attempted suicide and emotional disturbance.' He ordered a new trial, despite the absence of a pretrial request by defense counsel for disclosure of the evidence suppressed. See Brady v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 1196, 10 L.Ed.2d 215.

The Court of Appeals read Judge Moorman's opinion to hold that nondisclosure of evidence by the prosecution denies the accused due process if the evidence could reasonably be considered admissible and useful to the defense. The Court of Appeals viewed that formulation to be incomplete, holding that 'for the nondisclosure of evidence to amount to a denial of due process it must be such as is material and capable of clearing or tending to clear the accused of guilt or of substantially affecting the punishment to be imposed in addition to being such as could...