The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling in Brady v. Maryland requiring prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence does not create an automatic right to discovery of privileged information in Post-Conviction Relief Act cases and that discovery orders in such cases are immediately appealable.
In Commonwealth v. Williams, the justices ruled 6-1 to overturn a Lehigh County PCRA court’s discovery order requiring prosecutors in a murder case to hand over notes related to pretrial interviews with the defendant’s co-conspirators, finding that the court failed to give an adequate explanation for granting the defendant’s discovery request.
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