Hawkins v. United States

Summary

The D.C. Court of Appeals vacated Hawkins's convictions for attempted threats and attempted possession of a prohibited weapon because the government disclosed body-worn camera footage—revealing that a security guard had viewed private surveillance video contradicting the complainant's account—too late for the defense to subpoena the surveillance video before it was automatically deleted. The court held this untimely disclosure violated Brady, and that the suppressed evidence was material because earlier disclosure was reasonably likely to have changed the trial outcome. The court also upheld the sufficiency of the attempted-threats evidence to preserve the government's ability to retry. Senior Judge Thompson, dissenting, would have affirmed, reasoning that the surveillance segment the guard watched likely recorded the period after the incident, making it speculative that the video would have helped the defense.