summarizing three categories of cases in which courts “have attempted to analyze an accused’s right to due process when prosecutors fail[ed] to provide evidence to the defense which [was] within, or potentially within, their purview”
How later courts described this case
- summarizing three categories of cases in which courts “have attempted to analyze an accused’s right to due process when prosecutors fail[ed] to provide evidence to the defense which [was] within, or potentially within, their purview”
- holding that "[p]olice generally have no duty to collect evidence for the defense"
- stating “actions ... potentially prejudicial to the accused, may warrant different rules if ... commonplace.”
- “Bad faith, as used in cases involving destroyed evidence or statements, means that the state deliberately destroyed the evidence with the intent to deprive the defense of information; that is, that the evidence was destroyed by, or at the direction of, a state agent who intended to thwart the defense.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MESCHKE, Justice,
concurring.
I join in the opinion for the court by Chief Justice VandeWalle. I write separately only to point out that, in a proper case, either the prosecution or defense in a criminal trial would be entitled to a correct jury instruction, similar to NDJI-Civil 1625, on an adverse inference against the party that fails to produce or destroys evidence under his control, if no satisfactory explanation for that failure is given. See 29 AmJur2d Evidence §§ 178, 179 (1967); Charles E. Torcia, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, § 146 (13th ed. 1972); 2 Wig-more, Evidence §§ 290, 291 (Chadbourn rev. 1979). A party is entitled to a jury instruction if there is evidence to support it. State v. Thiel, 411 N.W.2d 66 (N.D.1987).