Brown v. United States

Issue: (1) Whether, in reviewing a Brady v. Maryland ruling, the Fifth Circuit erred in applying the highly deferential "clear error" standard of review instead of de novo, thereby exacerbating confusion, widening a circuit split, and conflicting with this Court's approach; (2) whether the Fifth Circuit recast and misapplied this Court"s definition of materiality in Kyles v Whitley by (i) failing to account for the cumulative impact of multiple failures to produce exculpatory evidence or (ii) postulating a theory of nonmateriality that required abandonment of the government's entire theory of the case; and (3) whether the suppressed exculpatory evidence was material as matter of law under Brady and Kyles because prosecutors (i) impaired the adversary process by providing incomplete and misleading summaries, causing the defense to assume that the concealed exculpatory evidence did not exist or (ii) capitalized on their concealment by repeatedly eliciting evidence and making representations to the jury that the suppressed evidence explicitly contradicted.