Discovery

Defendant appealed the decision of the trial magistrate sustaining the violations of R.I.G.L. 1956 §§ 31-27-2.1 (refusal to submit to a chemical test) and 31-14-3 (conditions requiring reduced speed).  Defendant argued that his due process rights were violated when the State failed to deliver in discovery copies of the Officer’s initial recorded statements or initial written narrative because the statements had a material bearing on his guilt or innocence.  The Panel explained that, in order to demonstrate a due process violation based on the destruction of exculpatory evidence under the “tripartite” test adopted by the Rhode Island Supreme Court in State v. Garcia, 643 A.2d 180, 185 (R.I. 1994), a defendant must show: (1) the evidence possessed exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed; (2) the Defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonable means; and (3) the failure to preserve the exculpatory evidence amounted to bad faith on the part of the state.  Id.  The Panel explained that the Defendant failed to satisfy all three prongs of the test because: 1) there had been no showing that the evidence would exonerate or cast any doubt on the credibility of Officer’s trial testimony; 2) the final written report differed only in grammatical changes and revisions indicating the type of medication the defendant was regularly taking at the time of arrest; and 3) there was no showing of bad faith because the police regularly destroy initial field notes before submitting their final reports.  Accordingly, the Panel held that the trial magistrate’s decision did not prejudice the due process rights of the Defendant and sustained the charged violations.

State of Rhode Island v. James Estey, Jr., C.A. No. T10-0029 (June 9, 2010).pdf