Youngblood</Em> Success Stories: Overcoming the "Bad Faith"
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Volume 109 Issue 2 Article 8 June 2019 The Youngblood Success Stories: Overcoming the "Bad Faith" Destruction of Evidence Standard Teresa N. Chen United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, and the Evidence Commons Recommended Citation Teresa N. Chen, The Youngblood Success Stories: Overcoming the "Bad Faith" Destruction of Evidence Standard, 109 W. Va. L. Rev. (2019). Available at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol109/iss2/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the WVU College of Law at The Research Repository @ WVU. It has been accepted for inclusion in West Virginia Law Review by an authorized editor of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Chen: The <em>Youngblood</em> Success Stories: Overcoming the "Bad Fait THE YOUNGBLOOD SUCCESS STORIES: OVERCOMING THE "BAD FAITH" DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE STANDARD Teresa N. Chen* I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 422 II. THE INTERPRETATION OF YOUNGBLOOD .......................................... 424 III. SEVEN CASES, NEITHER UNIQUE NOR ANOMALOUS ........................ 426 A. United States v. Cooper ....................................................... 427 B. U nited States v. Bohl ........................................................... 429 C. Stuart v. State ...................................................................... 431 D . United States v. Elliott......................................................... 433 E. State v. M cGrone ................................................................ 435 F. State v. B enson ................................................................... 437 G. United States v. Yevakpor ................................................... 439 IV. LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THESE CASES ................................. 441 A . P ublicity ............................................................................. 44 2 B. Characteristicsof the Evidence ........................................... 444 1. Size of Evidence ..................................................... 444 2. Ease with which Evidence can be Saved ................. 445 3. Reliability and Omnipresence of the Evidence in Today's Society ................................... 445 C. Incomplete or Missing Portions of Evidence ........................ 446 D. Putting the State on Notice that Evidence Must be Saved ..... 448 E. Recklessness or Extreme Negligence ................................... 449 V. COMMON THREADS RUNNING THROUGH THESE CASES .................... 451 A. The Courts Focus on the Materialityof the Evidence ........... 451 B. The Courts Ask the State to Explain the Destruction of E vidence ............................................................................. 453 VI. C ONCLUSION ................................................................................... 456 Law Clerk to the Honorable E. Thomas Boyle, United States Magistrate Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York; J.D., cum laude, University at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York; A.B., Cornell University. I would like to thank Pro- fessor Janet Lindgren for her guidance and inspiration during the research and writing process and long after the writing process had ended; Colin Starger for making me aware of the importance of this topic and practicing attorneys' need for a practical guide; John Kosmidis for his incredible patience, support, and thoughtful comments; and my mother, Nancy Cheung, for all her encour- agement in endeavors beyond law and this Article. Disseminated by The Research Repository @ WVU, 2019 1 West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 109, Iss. 2 [2019], Art. 8 WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 109 I. INTRODUCTION During my time at the Innocence Project, there was nothing more heart- breaking than the cases where I believed that the client was innocent but could not find the DNA evidence to support that claim.' Destruction of evidence is the number one problem faced by Innocence Project attorneys.2 For various reasons, evidence in criminal cases can be lost, misplaced, or destroyed, and it is up to the defendants and the defendants' attorneys to make sense of the missing pieces. The struggle to prove that a defendant is innocent is already a challeng- ing task without legal standards that provide additional hurdles.3 Yet, the United States Supreme Court, with its 1988 decision in Arizona v. Youngblood,4 made the struggle even more difficult for those bringing destruction of evidence claims. In Youngblood, the Court created an extremely high standard, establish- ing that when the state destroys "potentially exculpatory" evidence before a defendant is given access to it, that action does not constitute a due process vio- lation unless the defendant can demonstrate that the state acted in "bad faith." 5 Unfortunately, what.was initially hailed as an almost "impossible" standard by critics 6 has almost proven to be just that. According to this author's research, there are 1,675 published cases that have cited Youngblood to date but only seven reported cases where bad faith has been found.7 The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law is a non-profit legal clinic and criminal justice resource center that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted through post conviction DNA testing and develops and implements reforms to prevent wrongful convictions. Since its inception, more than 180 people have been exonerated, including 14 sen- tenced to death. The author worked at the Innocence Project in the summer of 2004. 2 Telephone Interview with Colin Starger (Nov. 4, 2004). 3 See, e.g., Interview with Audrey Levitin, available at httpJ/www.rexfoundation.orgblog/2006/09/innocence-project.html ('The search for evidence in a case can take many years and often ends with the discovery that crucial evidence has been de- stroyed or has degraded after having been kept in unsuitable storage facilities."). 4 488 U.S. 51 (1988). 5 Id. at58. 6 See, e.g., Karen Carlson Paul, Destruction of Exculpatory Evidence: Bad Faith Standard Erodes Due Process Rights, Arizona v. Youngblood, _ U.S. _ 109 S. Ct. 333 (1988), 21 ARtZ ST. L.J. 1181, 1195 (1989) ("Proving bad faith, as defined in Youngblood, is almost impossi- ble."). 7 See Elizabeth Bawden, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow - Three Common Mistakes Courts Make When Police Lose or Destroy Evidence with Apparent Exculpatory Value, 48 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 335, 350 n.76 (2000) (finding only three cases of bad faith as of 2000). According to the author's research, there are 1,675 published cases that have cited Youngblood as of August 2006. The seven successful cases presented herein do not purport to be an exact statistical number of cases in which bad faith was found but rather are the results of the author's best research efforts. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol109/iss2/8 2 Chen: The <em>Youngblood</em> Success Stories: Overcoming the "Bad Fait 2007] YOUNGBLOOD SUCCESS STORIES The seven successful cases are special because they stand out amongst their peers as cases that have achieved an almost unattainable goal. However, a comparison with numerous unsuccessful destruction of evidence cases reveals that the successful cases are not particularly unique or anomalous. In fact, they raise the possibility that other cases would have been successful had they been before other courts. Because these successful cases are not peculiar or extreme, they can provide hope for those bringing destruction of evidence claims that even the most ordinary case can bring about a somewhat extraordinary outcome. In addition, there are a number of lessons to be learned from case-specific ob- servations and common threads running through the cases. Each one provides some insight into how the cases were won and how future claims might also be successful. This Article is intended as an aid for attorneys bringing destruction of evidence claims under the Youngblood bad faith standard. Attorneys research- ing Youngblood claims and seeking legal precedent will be faced with a distinct lack of cases that have successfully argued bad faith destruction of evidence. Moreover, attorneys will have difficulty unearthing those few cases that have succeeded in arguing bad faith as they have been decided at very different times by various courts. For the foregoing reasons, this Article collates the seven suc- cessful bad faith cases and highlights the reasons for their successes. Although the Youngblood requirement of bad faith for destruction of evidence claims has proven to be a harsh standard for defendants, there is much to be gleaned from the seven successful cases that may prove helpful. This Ar- ticle not only introduces the cases that have proven bad faith but also suggests factors that may have made them successful. The author analyzed the material for this Article by comparing and contrasting the seven successful cases with each other and with unsuccessful cases and through interviews with the defense attorneys who argued the successful cases. In this manner, this Article is in- tended as a primer for attorneys bringing Youngblood claims and most of all as a source of encouragement and hope in the face of a difficult standard. Part H1 of this Article provides a summary of Arizona v. Youngblood and explains the methods that