Jason Branum and Bryan Brunsting v. United States

A jury’s verdict in a trial will rarely be disturbed on the basis of witness credibility or reliability. Courts are loath to alter a jury’s finding even when a witness’s statements and prior testimony are inconsistent to the point that the trial testimony is highly improbable. With the backdrop of extreme public hostility to the Los Angeles Sheriff ’s Department, the jury in the case below convicted two deputy sheriffs on the word of a fellow deputy sheriff, who was arguably an accomplice, and whose testimony was contradicted, on every material point, by his own prior statements to authorities and in sworn grand jury testimony, and whose testimony was wholly contradicted by medical evidence. The question presented is: Whether appellate courts can reject the trial testimony of an accomplice witness, whose trial testimony was inconsistent with his prior statements and testimony on nearly all material facts, and whose testimony is contradicted by medical evidence as the basis for a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because that testimony is improbable or unreliable.