Taylor v. Illinois

Facts

The defendant was charged with attempted murder after a fatal street fight. Well in advance of trial, the prosecutor filed a discovery motion requesting a list of defense witnesses. In his original response, the defendant identified the two women, who later testified, and two men, who did not testify. On the first day of trial, the defense counsel was allowed to amend his answer by adding the names of Derrick Travis and a Chicago police officer, neither of which actually testified.

On the second day of trial, the defense counsel made a motion to amend his answer once again in order to include two more witnesses. The defense counsel represented that he had just been informed about them and that they had probably seen the “entire incident.” Later, the defense counsel admitted that he knew about the witnesses beforehand and could have originally included their names on the answer to the discovery motion.

The judge found that the defense counsel willfully violated the discovery rules and doubted that the witnesses even saw what happened. The judge concluded that the appropriate sanction for the discovery violation was to exclude their testimony. The defendant was convicted.