New trial ordered

Supreme Court overturns Louisiana death row conviction because the State failed to disclose evidence undermining its star witness

Undisclosed police records, a witness's requests for a deal and medical records had to be weighed together, not one by one. Taken together they undermined confidence in a capital murder verdict, so a new trial was required.

Wearry v. Cain, 577 U.S. 385

5 min read

Court: Supreme Court of the United States
Decided: Mar 7, 2016
Conviction to this result: 14 years
Sentence: Death

Conviction reversed by summary order; case sent back and a new trial required The conviction was set aside, but the charge can be tried again. The presumption of innocence applies.

What happened

The victim was killed on the evening of April 4, 1998. Nearly two years later a man who was then in jail contacted the authorities and implicated Michael Wearry. His first account was wrong about basic facts: he said the victim had been shot and left on a different road from where the body was found. He changed his story in four later statements. By trial he told the jury that he, Wearry and others had robbed the victim, driven around with him and assaulted him, and that Wearry and two others had finally killed the victim by running him over. A second witness, also in jail, said he had seen Wearry and others with a man who looked like the victim that night. He said he was testifying not for any favor but because his sister knew the victim's sister. The prosecution told the jury in opening that he "hasn't asked for a thing" and in closing that he "has no deal on the table". The State presented no physical evidence at trial. Other witnesses said they saw Wearry in the victim's car or with the victim's property. Wearry said he was at a wedding reception 40 miles away. His girlfriend, her sister and her aunt backed him up. The jury convicted and imposed death. After the conviction became final, it emerged that the State had not disclosed three things: police records in which two inmates cast doubt on the star witness, including a report that he wanted to make sure Wearry "gets the needle"; evidence that the second witness had twice sought a sentence reduction for testifying; and medical records showing that the man the star witness described as physically handling the victim had undergone surgery nine days earlier to repair a ruptured patellar tendon. The jury had heard that this man had recent knee surgery, but not what kind.

Procedural history

Apr 4, 1998
The victim was killed in Louisiana between about 8:20 and 9:30 in the evening.
Undated
Nearly two years after the killing, a jailed man contacted the authorities and implicated Wearry. He later gave four more accounts, each differing in material ways.
Mar 2002
Jury trial. Wearry convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.Louisiana trial court
Apr 2, 2006
Conviction and sentence affirmed on direct appeal (State v. Weary). Then-Justice Johnson dissented on jury selection grounds.Louisiana Supreme Court
Undated
Wearry raised Brady and ineffective assistance claims after the undisclosed evidence came to light. Relief denied for lack of prejudice.Louisiana state postconviction court
Undated
Postconviction relief denied. Chief Justice Johnson would have granted relief on ineffective assistance; Justice Crichton would have remanded on an intellectual disability claim.Louisiana Supreme Court
Mar 7, 2016
Certiorari granted and judgment summarily reversed for a Brady violation. Case remanded; a new trial is required. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented.Supreme Court of the United States

The offence and its elements

Capital murder

Louisiana capital murder (the opinion does not cite the section number)

What the prosecution had to prove:

A human being was killednot disputedFrom the reasons
The accused was a participant in the killing (identity)disputedFrom the reasons
The accused acted with specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harmnot addressedGeneral law: check the current text
An aggravating circumstance making the killing capital, such as a killing during an armed robberynot addressedGeneral law: check the current text

The questions on appeal

Was the undisclosed evidence "material" under Brady v. Maryland, so that withholding it breached due process?: Yes. Wearry did not have to show he would probably have been acquitted. He only had to show the evidence undermined confidence in the verdict. The State's case rested on one witness with five shifting stories, backed by a second witness whose motives the jury was told about inaccurately. The new evidence, viewed together, met that standard.
Did the Louisiana postconviction court apply the right method?: No. It assessed each piece of withheld evidence on its own instead of cumulatively, stressed reasons a juror might ignore the evidence while overlooking reasons a juror might not, and never mentioned the two inmate statements at all.
Could the Supreme Court decide this without full briefing and oral argument?: The majority said yes, because the lower courts had egregiously misapplied settled law and the State had already set out its full position. Justices Alito and Thomas dissented. They agreed the evidence should have been disclosed but said the materiality question was fact-intensive and deserved full argument or federal habeas review first.
Was Wearry's trial lawyer constitutionally ineffective?: Not decided. Because the Brady violation alone required a new trial, the Court did not reach this claim. It remains an allegation, not a finding.

The law the court applied

Brady disclosure rule

The prosecution violates due process when it suppresses evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt or punishment, whether or not it acted in good faith. This extends to evidence that undermines a witness's credibility.

Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83; Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150

Materiality: undermine confidence

Evidence is material if there is any reasonable likelihood it could have affected the jury's judgment. The accused need not show acquittal was more likely than not, only that the withheld evidence undermines confidence in the verdict.

Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150; Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264; Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73

Cumulative evaluation

A court must weigh all the withheld evidence together, not piece by piece, when deciding whether it was material.

Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419

Suppression includes police-held evidence

The State is responsible for favorable evidence known only to police investigators at the time of trial, even if the prosecutor did not learn of it until after trial.

Youngblood v. West Virginia, 547 U.S. 867; Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419

What the court decided

The prosecution's failure to disclose material evidence violated Wearry's due process rights under Brady. The State's case was "a house of cards" resting on a witness whose credibility would have been further damaged by the undisclosed evidence, and the state court wrongly assessed each item in isolation. The judgment of the Louisiana postconviction court was reversed and the case remanded; a new trial is required. The Court did not decide the ineffective assistance claim. This is a published per curiam decision, meaning it speaks for the Court as a whole rather than a named author, decided without full briefing or oral argument. Two Justices dissented on the materiality question and on the use of summary procedure.

What happens next: The case was sent back to the Louisiana courts for further proceedings consistent with the opinion, which means a new trial if the State chooses to proceed. Wearry is presumed innocent at any retrial. The opinion does not record what happened afterward.

Analysis

This is our commentary, separate from the court’s reasons.

Why the case turned on method, not just on the undisclosed evidence

The decisive flaw in the state court's reasoning was structural. It weighed each withheld item on its own and, for each, found a reason a juror might shrug it off. In this case that approach let every piece of impeachment be explained away separately. Kyles v. Whitley requires the opposite: ask what the whole picture would have looked like to the jury. Once the Court did that, the three categories reinforced each other. The star witness was shown to have a possible grudge, a reported instance of coaching another inmate to lie, and a story that depended on a man who had just had a tendon repaired. The second witness, offered as a disinterested corroborator, had twice sought leniency, even though there is no evidence he received any. The Court also faulted the state court for never mentioning the inmate statements. Silence about favorable evidence is itself a sign that the cumulative exercise was not done.

A low bar, honestly applied, and where the dissent pushed back

The opinion is a reminder that Brady materiality is not a sufficiency test. The majority accepted that a jury armed with the new evidence could still have convicted. That was not the question. The question was whether the Court could be confident the jury would have. The State presented no physical evidence at trial, and the only direct link to the killing was an informant who had been wrong about the cause of death and the location of the body in his first account. The Court noted that the remaining circumstantial evidence pointed, at most, to involvement after the fact, a far lesser offence. The dissent's response deserves a fair hearing. The jury already knew the star witness had told inconsistent stories, already knew the second witness had changed his first account to protect himself, and already knew the third man had knee surgery nine days before the killing. The medical records added only the type of procedure, and the two postconviction experts disagreed about whether it would have left him incapable of what was described. The majority's answer was that neither Wearry nor the jury could have known the surgery was a patellar tendon repair rather than a minor procedure, and that the state court could not discount the defence expert entirely just because the State's expert disagreed. That is the point made in Agurs: the weaker a verdict already looks, the less additional evidence it takes to create a reasonable doubt.

Procedure and the unreached claim

Justice Alito did not defend the non-disclosure. His objection was to deciding a fact-heavy question on certiorari papers alone, and to bypassing the deferential federal habeas standard under AEDPA. The majority's answer was that summary reversal in capital cases is not new and that waiting would mean yet more time on death row under a flawed conviction. The practical lesson is that the Court will act on the papers when a state court's error is plain and settled law has been misapplied. That is uncommon, and the disagreement here shows that reasonable judges can differ on when it is justified. The ineffective assistance claim was not decided and remains an allegation only. Still, the record the Court described, counsel admitting he did no independent investigation despite dozens of potential alibi witnesses, shows what the later postconviction investigation found that trial preparation in this case did not.

If this feels close to home

Withheld evidence must be assessed cumulatively. If a court has picked off each item one at a time, that is itself a legal error worth raising on further review.
The Brady test does not require proof that you would have been acquitted. It asks whether the undisclosed evidence undermines confidence in the verdict. Cases built on a single informant or cooperating witness are especially vulnerable.
Evidence that a witness asked for a deal is disclosable even if no deal was ever made. The jury is entitled to know why a witness came forward.
The State's disclosure duty covers favorable evidence held by police at the time of trial, even if prosecutors learned of it only afterward. Police possession settles who is responsible; the evidence must still be favorable and material before it counts under Brady.
Postconviction investigation can uncover what trial counsel never looked for. In this case independent alibi witnesses and the informant's own family were found years later. Those avenues may remain open even after direct appeals fail, though success is never assured.

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What went wrong

Evidence not disclosed Unreliable informant Police or Crown misconduct

How this was checked

Written by Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic AI) from the source below, then independently audited against it by GPT-6-Astra (OpenAI AI) on Nov 6, 2026. Every citation here was confirmed by software to appear in the decision or an official text. No lawyer has reviewed this brief. Our standards

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Citations

577 U.S. 385 This decision
Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 Due process duty to disclose favorable material evidence
Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 Brady applies to evidence undermining witness credibility
Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 A witness's attempt to obtain a deal is material even without a binding promise
Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73 Materiality means undermining confidence, not proof of likely acquittal
United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97 Minor additional evidence can create reasonable doubt where the verdict is already questionable
Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 Cumulative evaluation of withheld evidence; State responsible for police-held evidence
Youngblood v. West Virginia, 547 U.S. 867 Suppression occurs even when evidence is known only to police investigators
Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30 Courts may not discount defence expert evidence entirely because the State's expert disagreed
United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667 Dissent's statement of the reasonable probability standard
State v. Weary, 2003-3067 (La.4/2/06), 931 So.2d 297 Direct appeal affirming the conviction
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 Jury selection claim raised on direct appeal
Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 Intellectual disability claim noted by Justice Crichton, not pursued in this petition
Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U.S. 327 Dissent on the Court rarely reviewing state postconviction denials directly
La.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 14:25Accessory after the fact, maximum five years, contrasted with capital murder
28 U.S.C. § 1257Supreme Court jurisdiction over final state court judgments
28 U.S.C. § 2254AEDPA standard that would have governed federal habeas review

Sources

Wearry v. Cain, Wearry v. Cain, 577 U.S. 385 (2016) (per curiam)

Opinion text and some citation links come through CourtListener, a project of Free Law Project. Free Law Project did not produce, endorse or verify this brief. Its copies of court documents can contain errors, so check the court's own file before relying on a quotation.

This brief is general information about one case. It is not legal advice, and it may not reflect later developments. Read the full reasons and speak to a lawyer about your own situation.