By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author. Posted August 8, 2026. Last updated August 9, 2026.
The legal standard, briefly
Under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the prosecution must disclose evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt or punishment. Under Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959), a conviction obtained through testimony the State knows to be false must be set aside where the testimony could reasonably have affected the verdict — and fundamental fairness is offended “when the State, although not soliciting false evidence, allows it to go uncorrected when it appears.” Under Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972), that duty extends to evidence bearing on a witness’s credibility, including promises of leniency.
Five matters in this case are framed under those cases.
1. The second statement about the murder weapon
The .22 caliber semi-automatic identified as the murder weapon was traced through Randal Smith to his son Corey Smith, who reported it stolen from his truck. (OPSO offense report, ATF trace summary; trial record.)
A handwritten investigator’s note, dated February 20, 2004, records a second account from Corey Smith. According to the note, Smith had been arrested for fighting at the Library Lounge on January 11, 2001 (a date a police report confirms), and had given the keys to his truck to a man named Keith Norman so Norman could move it from the parking lot; Smith believed Norman traded the gun for drugs, and Smith noticed the gun and other items missing from the glove box the next day. (Handwritten investigator’s note dated February 20, 2004, disclosed in the District Attorney’s file on March 12, 2008; described in the Application for Post-Conviction Relief, 4th JDC, filed March 16, 2009.)
The 2009 application for post-conviction relief alleged that the State suppressed this note in violation of Brady — that it pointed to “another, more probable suspect” and showed the murder weapon had been in someone else’s possession. The trial court denied that application without an evidentiary hearing on July 14, 2009. A later federal habeas petition was dismissed as time-barred, which left the 2009 Brady claim without review on the merits by any federal court. (2009 application; ruling of July 14, 2009; writ application at 6.)
2. Clarence Kennedy’s plea
Kennedy testified at Mr. Hunter’s trial that he had been promised nothing. R. 2151, 2164. The record of his own prosecution shows what he received.
He pled to first-degree robbery, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years with twenty suspended. (Court records, No. 01-F-0649; minute entries of the plea and sentence, Exhibit H-3 to the 2022 application for post-conviction relief; 2022 application at ¶¶ 134–139.)
La. R.S. 14:64.1 provides that whoever commits first-degree robbery “shall be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than three years and for not more than forty years, without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of imposition or execution of sentence.”
The statute forbids suspension for that offense. Twenty years of the sentence were suspended. This is not consistent with Kennedy’s testimony that he received no benefit.
Two days after the State received a Gene Screen result that did not tie Mr. Hunter to the killings (see §4), on February 13, 2002, the State moved to dismiss a separate simple-burglary charge pending against Kennedy. At trial, that simple-burglary charge was put before the jury as a conviction — Tr. 592 — although the records show it had been dismissed pursuant to a plea more than two years earlier. (Trial transcript at 592; court records; 2022 application for post-conviction relief at ¶ 112.)
The State did not correct the “no benefit” testimony. Whether that failure states a Napue violation has been litigated in post-conviction proceedings and, to date, rejected.
3. Vaccara Comanche’s undisclosed exposure and treatment
This is the subject of the current 2026 application, and it is set out in full — with the sentencing transcripts, the clerk’s minutes, and the verbatim quotations — on the jailhouse informants page. In brief:
Comanche gave his recorded statement against Mr. Hunter on July 20, 2001, while three prosecutions against him were open. He was presented to the jury as a two-time felony offender who had been promised nothing. The records counsel obtained on March 27, 2025 show a fuller picture: an undisclosed five-count burglary conviction that made him a three-time offender; a habitual-offender bill filed April 15, 2002 and dismissed November 25, 2002 — thirty-nine days after Mr. Hunter’s indictment; and a sentencing judge who observed on the record that Comanche “was kind of bought and paid for,” with the prosecutor conceding that the two-time-offender figure was “a mistake.” (Writ application at 11–19; sentencing transcript, April 15, 2002; clerk’s minutes.)
The 2026 application frames this as a Brady / Giglio / Napue violation. It was filed March 26, 2026, supplemented April 20, 2026, and denied April 29 / filed May 4, 2026; a Motion to Reconsider was denied June 9, 2026; and an application for supervisory writ is pending in the Second Circuit, filed July 9, 2026.
4. The Gene Screen report the State promised to produce
This one is different in kind: it is not impeachment of a witness but scientific evidence, and the key exchange happened in open court.
The Gene Screen report, dated January 30, 2002, concerned blood on items collected in the investigation. The State’s own file records the result: the apparent blood on a yellow “Polo” sweater was not the blood of Levi Williams, Chavez Staten, or Jeremy Staten, and no blood was found on the other items submitted. (OPSO Narrative #48, results received February 11, 2002.)
At a hearing on the defense’s Motion to Compel on December 11, 2003, defense counsel Robert Johnson told the court the report had never been produced. Assistant District Attorney J. Michael Ruddick, after saying he had been told “there’s nothing that came from Genescreen — there may be something that’s blood but it doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Hunter,” committed on the record:
RUDDICK: “But if Mr. Medaries has a report, I’ll get it and give it to Mr. Johnson.”
JOHNSON: “I just want it if it exists.”
THE COURT: “…you have no objection to producing that?”
RUDDICK: “Absolutely, I’ll provide that.”
(Transcript, Hearing on Motion to Compel, December 11, 2003, at 15–20; Bates Hunter 000479–000484.)
Mr. Hunter’s position is that no copy of the report was ever provided to the defense.
5. The alibi statement the defense never received
Mr. Hunter’s alibi for the night of the killings was never presented to the jury. Stephanie Stokes — the mother of his four youngest children — swears that Mr. Hunter was home the entire evening of March 10, 2001, and that she gave that account to police during the investigation. (Affidavit of Stephanie Stokes, December 19, 2022, exhibit to the 2022 application for post-conviction relief. See the full account on the case.)
According to her affidavit, she gave the statement to Officer Royce Toney, who “kept re-directing our conversation to imply that Tony might have left,” made no notes she ever saw, and stopped contacting her after she would not change it. She swears she was never called as an alibi witness and did not know, until Mr. Hunter’s current lawyers asked about an alibi, that “the statement I gave was never passed along.”
The documentary record corroborates the omission. Stephanie Stokes is listed as a witness in the police report, at page 21, and Detective Harris testified at the bond-reduction hearing that investigators went to her home to speak with her. Yet there is no record of her interview anywhere in the 282-page offense report. (Application for Post-Conviction Relief, 4th JDC, filed December 30, 2022, ¶75; bond-reduction hearing testimony of Detective Harris, Tr. 98.)
If that account is accurate, a favorable alibi statement was not disclosed to the defense and no alibi witness was called at a trial with no physical evidence. Those are the concerns Brady (as to disclosure) and the Sixth Amendment (as to calling the witness) address.
The other half
Every disclosure claim on this page has, to date, been rejected or denied:
- The Second Circuit affirmed the conviction. State v. Hunter, 907 So. 2d 200 (La. App. 2 Cir. 6/29/05), writ denied, 925 So. 2d 507 (La. 3/10/06).
- Post-conviction applications were denied May 31, 2007; July 14, 2009; May 29, 2013; and February 1, 2023 (Second Circuit denying June 1, 2023; Louisiana Supreme Court November 21, 2023).
- The 2026 application was denied April 29 / May 4, 2026, and the Motion to Reconsider was denied June 9, 2026.
- A federal habeas petition was dismissed as time-barred, leaving the 2009 Brady claim without federal merits review.
The supervisory writ filed July 9, 2026 is pending in the Second Circuit.
No court has found that the State suppressed evidence in this case.
Our view
The site’s own analysis, resting on the facts above.
In our view, in a case with no physical evidence, the credibility of the witnesses was the whole trial — and the matters described above go directly to it. A sentence a statute does not permit, a dismissed charge put to the jury as a conviction, a witness’s undisclosed exposure and the timing of its relief, and scientific testing that pointed away from Mr. Hunter: each is an objective fact about a record, not a characterization. What weight they should have carried was for a jury that did not have them.