Supreme Court overturns New Orleans man's murder conviction

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a New Orleans man's murder conviction must be reversed because prosecutors failed to reveal that the sole eyewitness to the crime had earlier said he could not identify the killer. The decision was 8-1; Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissent.

The case brings to the fore problems of prosecutors' hiding evidence and the guarantee, stemming from a 1963 Supreme Court decision, that the government must turn over evidence favorable to a defendant.

"We have observed that evidence impeaching an eyewitness may not be material if the state's other evidence is strong enough to sustain confidence in the verdict," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "That is not the case here."

Juan Smith was charged with killing five people during a 1995 armed robbery of a New Orleans home. A single eyewitness, Larry Boatner, connected Smith to the killings.

Boatner testified at trial, according to the Supreme Court's decision Tuesday, that he had been "face to face with Smith during the initial moments of the robbery."

At a jury trial, Smith was convicted of five counts of murder.

On appeal, Smith obtained files that showed that Boatner had told police on the night of the killings that he "could not ID anyone because (he) couldn't see faces." Prosecutors had not turned over a detective's report of that information to Smith before trial.

In assessing whether that information should have been revealed, Roberts noted that a 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, demands that a state turn over evidence that would be favorable to the defendant and "material" to his guilt or punishment.

He said Boatner's comments met that test.

"Boatner's testimony was the only evidence linking Smith to the crime. And Boatner's undisclosed statements directly contradict his testimony," Roberts wrote.

His opinion for the court majority in Smith v. Cain was a remarkably short four pages. Thomas, dissenting from the ruling, elaborated for 19 pages on why he thought Smith's conviction should not be reversed.

Thomas said Boatner's earlier statement of doubt about the killer did not undermine Boatner's confidence in his identification of Smith at trial.

"Much of the record evidence confirms that, from the night of the murders through trial, Boatner consistently described — with one understandable exception — the first perpetrator through the door, that Boatner's description matched Smith," Thomas wrote.