[patent]

Before trial all the prosecutor has to disclose to the defendant is so called Brady material, that is material that is exculpatory.

Do you mean a defendant doesn’t have any real discovery rights, to ask for all documents related to this or that, for example?

patent  +AMDG

[APBaer]

"Do you mean a defendant doesn’t have any real discovery rights, to ask for all documents related to this or that, for example?"

Yes, I know that it seems backwards, what with a person's personal liberty at stake in a criminal proceeding, that there is no right to liberal discovery of the opponent (the porsecutor)like there is in a civil proceeding.

In some Federal Judicial Districts, as "a matter of grace" the prosecutors may have an "open file policy" that is not the general policy, and it is certainly not a right.

A federal criminal trial is much more of an old fashioned "trial by ambush," which was eliminated in civil trials by generous pretrial discovery.