When a capitally sentenced defendant credibly demonstrates that state actors have continually exhibited bad-faith and the majority of evidence is lost, missing, or destroyed, did the lower court err in failing to find a Youngblood violation?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED This Court should accept this case to consider the following questions of great importance: 1. When a capitally sentenced defendant credibly demonstrates that (1) state actors have continually exhibited bad faith throughout the history of a case, and (2) the vast majority of evidence (all of which could prove at least potentially exculpatory) from a capital case is lost, missing, or destroyed at the hand of state actors, did the lower court err in failing to find a violation pursuant to Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 (1988)? In addition, there is a split among the Circuits and state courts as to what constitutes bad faith pursuant to this Court’s decision in Youngblood. Some courts have settled on a lesser standard requiring only that state actors had “knowledge” that the evidence was exculpatory when they lost or destroyed the evidence in question. On the other hand, a number of courts require that state actors demonstrated actual “purpose” to deceive or “official animus,” prior to granting relief on a Youngblood claim. Thus, this Court should accept this case to decide the following: 2. Pursuant to this Court’s decision in Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 (1988), what is the required standard that a defendant must meet to prove that state actors acted in “bad faith?” This Court in Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564 (1985), as well as other state and federal courts, criticized the practice of a trial court’s wholesale adoption of party-drafted Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, which i often leads to significant errors and, at best, creates the appearance of unfairness. Prosecutor-drafted Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, which absolve them of claimed misconduct, heightens the unfairness, and implicates the policies underlying Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510 (1927). As such, this Court should further accept this case to decide the following: 3. Is a capital defendant deprived of meaningful review, and are his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights violated as described in Anderson and Tumey, when the trial court adopts verbatim the Prosecutor’s flawed proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law to deny allegations of prosecutorial misconduct? ii