By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author. Posted August 11, 2026.
The rule
In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the Supreme Court held that due process forbids the prosecution from suppressing evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt or punishment — “irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” A Brady violation has three elements: the evidence was favorable (exculpatory or impeaching), it was suppressed (never reached the defense), and it was material — a reasonable probability that disclosure would have changed the result, meaning the suppression “undermines confidence in the outcome.” Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 434 (1995).
Why violations surface years late
A Brady violation is, by definition, invisible at trial — the defense cannot object to evidence it does not know exists. Violations surface the only way they can: through later records requests, habeas investigations, open-files reforms, and sometimes luck. That is why courts allow post-conviction claims when the factual basis was previously unavailable — and why the age of a claim says nothing about its merit.
Louisiana’s record
The landmark Brady cases of the modern era are, disproportionately, Louisiana cases. Kyles v. Whitley (1995) reversed a New Orleans death sentence over suppressed witness statements. Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73 (2012), reversed another Orleans Parish conviction 8–1 where the sole eyewitness’s contradictory statements were withheld. In Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51 (2011), John Thompson spent 14 years on death row after a crime-lab report was suppressed — he won a civil verdict that the Supreme Court overturned 5–4, illustrating how rarely suppression carries consequences for the office responsible. And in Weary v. Cain, 577 U.S. 385 (2016), the Court summarily reversed a Louisiana conviction where the State concealed its informant witness’s history of seeking favorable treatment.
The Brady claims in the Tony Hunter case
Tony Hunter’s filings present five disclosure claims — a second statement about the murder weapon, Clarence Kennedy’s plea and statute-forbidden sentence, Vaccara Comanche’s undisclosed exposure and its resolution after the indictment, the handling of the exculpatory Gene Screen report, and an alibi statement the defense says it never received. Each is documented, record by record, on the withheld evidence page; the informant-specific benefits are detailed in the Kennedy and Comanche evidence files. The filings invoke Tassin v. Cain, 517 F.3d 770, 780 (5th Cir. 2008) — “the crux of a Fourteenth Amendment violation is deception. A promise is unnecessary” — and the parallel to Weary.
The other half
No court has found a Brady violation in this case. The claims have been presented across applications denied in 2007, 2009, 2013, 2023 and 2026; a federal petition was dismissed as time-barred without merits review; a supervisory writ application filed July 9, 2026 is pending in the Second Circuit. We state the allegations as allegations, publish the records they rest on, and report every ruling. (Procedural history · What is exculpatory evidence? · Prosecutorial misconduct.)