Brady material consists of exculpatory

Exculpatory evidence

Exculpatory evidence is the evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial, which clears or tends to clear the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to prove guilt....

 or impeaching information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence or to the punishment of a defendant. The term comes from the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland

Brady v. Maryland

Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 , was a United States Supreme Court case in which the prosecution had withheld from the criminal defendant certain evidence. The defendant challenged his conviction, arguing it had been contrary to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United...

, in which the Supreme Court ruled that suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to a defendant who has requested it violates due process

Due process

Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...

. Following Brady, the prosecutor must disclose evidence or information that would prove the innocence of the defendant or would enable the defense to more effectively impeach the credibility of government witnesses. Evidence that would serve to reduce the defendant's sentence must also be disclosed by the prosecution.

Examples

• The prosecutor must disclose an agreement not to prosecute a witness in exchange for the witness's testimony.
• The prosecutor must disclose leniency (or preferential treatment) agreements made with witnesses in exchange for testimony.
• The prosecutor must disclose exculpatory evidence
  Exculpatory evidence
  Exculpatory evidence is the evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial, which clears or tends to clear the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to prove guilt....
  
   known only to the police. That is, the prosecutor has a duty to reach out to the police and establish regular procedures by which the police must inform him of anything that tends to prove the innocence of the defendant. However, the prosecutor is not obligated to personally review police files in search of exculpatory information when the defendant asks for it.
• The prosecutor must disclose arrest photographs of the defendant when those photos do not match the victim's description.
• Some state systems have expansively defined Brady material to include many other items, including for example any documents which might reflect negatively on a witness's credibility.

See also

• Jencks Act
  Jencks Act
  The Jencks Act, , provides that the government be required to produce a verbatim statement or report made by a government witness or prospective government witness , but not until after the witness has testified. Jencks material is evidence that is used in the course of a federal criminal...
  
  
• Jencks v. United States
  Jencks v. United States
  Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657 , is a U.S. Supreme Court case.The petitioner, Clinton Jencks appealed, by certiorari, his conviction in a Federal District Court of violating 18 U.S.C...
  
  
• Giglio v. United States
  Giglio v. United States
  -External links:* at the Oyez Project...