Joseph Shelton v. John Marshall

MEMORANDUM

In an opinion filed concurrently with this disposition, we order the writ granted with respect to Joseph Shelton’s conviction for the first-degree murder of Kevin Thorpe on the ground that the suppressed evidence regarding Norman Thomas was material to that conviction. We hold here, however, that the evidence of the prosecution’s secret deal with Thomas was not material with respect to Shelton’s convictions for the second-degree murder of Laura Craig, kidnapping, or theft. There is no reasonable probability that had Thomas’s testimony been omitted or had Thomas been impeached by evidence of his secret deal with the prosecution, the result of the proceedings would have been different with respect to those counts. See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 434 , 115 S.Ct. 1555 , 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995).

1. Kidnapping convictions. There was overwhelming evidence in the record apart from Thomas’s testimony of Shelton’s intentional participation in the kidnapping of both Thorpe and Craig. Thomas’s testimony differed from Shelton’s with respect to what was said in the truck before the kidnapping took place, but Shelton himself testified that he drove the truck to his property…