United States v. Carlton E. Bryant, United States of America v. William E. Turner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

29 federal appellate · 5 district · 39 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““. . . [BJefore a request for discovery has been made, the duty of disclosure is operative as a duty of preservation. Only if evidence is carefully preserved during the early stages of investigation will disclosure be possible later. “In the cases before us, . . . the issue is whether full sanctions for non-disclosure ought to be invoked absolutely, or whether imposition of sanctions ought to depend upon the circumstances of the material’s disappearance. “. . . An exception for good faith loss of important evidence must not be allowed to swallow the discovery rules, and the burden of explanation on the government must be a heavy one; but criminal convictions otherwise based on sufficient evidence may be permitted to stand so long as the Government made ‘earnest efforts’ to preserve crucial materials and to find them once a discovery request is made. “. . . [W]e hold that sanctions for non-disclosure based on loss of evidence will be invoked in the future unless the Government can show that it has promulgated, enforced and attempted in good faith to follow rigorous and systematic procedures designed to preserve all discoverable evidence gathered in the course of a criminal investigation. The burden, of course, is on the Government to make this showing. Negligent failure to comply with the required procedures will provide no excuse. “. . . On remand here the District Court should weigh the degree of negligence or bad faith involved, the importance of the evidence lost, and the ”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Wilkins · State v. Chouinard

2. “The lost tape here had major potential importance to the question of guilt or innocence, since it might have enabled appellants to contradict the testimony of the undercover agent involved in the narcotics transaction. It developed on remand, however, that the Bureau agents had played the tape and found it to be almost entirely unintelligible. The District Court credited the agents' testimony in this regard and concluded that the tape would have been of little use to appellants. There is nothing in the record which could justify our rejection of that conclusion. In the future, of course, investigative agencies will not be allowed to excuse nonpreservation of evidence by claiming that it contained nothing of interest to defendants. But, under the more pragmatic balancing approach which we have adopted for these cases, the unintelligibility of the tapes — when combined with the very strong evidence of guilt adduced at trial — outweighs the negligence involved in the loss of the tape.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Miranda · 363 So. 2d 324 - State v. Sobel

3. “. in the future, federal investigatory agencies must promulgate and rigorously enforce rules designed to preserve all discoverable evidence and that nonpreservation caused by failure to follow the rules, whether in bad faith or mere negligence, will result in imposition of full sanctions. [United States v. Bryant, 145 U.S.App.D.C. 259 , 260, 448 F.2d 1182, 1183 (1971), aff'g on remand, United States v. Bryant, 142 U.S.App.D. C. 132, 439 F.2d 642 (1971).]”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jones v. United States · Johnson v. United States