## Facts

- Kemepaudor Ekiyor traveled from Nigeria to Canada on an itinerary with connecting flights in Amsterdam and Detroit.
- At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, law-enforcement officers found more than six kilograms of cocaine inside a locked suitcase.
- The suitcase bore a luggage tag with Ekiyor’s name, and Ekiyor possessed a key that opened the suitcase.
- A federal grand jury indicted Ekiyor for (1) importing cocaine and (2) possessing cocaine with intent to distribute.
- Ekiyor’s defense theory was that airport baggage handlers could have inserted the cocaine into the suitcase without his knowledge.
- Before trial, Ekiyor moved to compel the United States to disclose information he characterized as Brady material: information about drug trafficking by airport baggage handlers at Detroit and other airports, including investigations and prosecutions.
- The government represented that it had provided Ekiyor with information about two recent cases in which baggage handlers at Detroit Metro had been charged with drug smuggling, but it declined to provide broader categories of information requested by the defense.
- The district court (E.D. Mich.) decided the motion on the opening day of trial and issued an opinion and order addressing the scope of the government’s disclosure obligations.

## Issues

1. Whether Brady v. Maryland required the government to disclose broad information about baggage-handler drug smuggling and related investigations when the defendant argued the information might support an alternative-perpetrator theory.
2. Whether the defendant’s sweeping requests exceeded the government’s discovery obligations under Brady and Fed. R. Crim. P. 16 when the defense showed no concrete link between the requested materials and the charged conduct.

## Decision

- The court denied Ekiyor’s motion to compel.
- The court found the requested categories of information were not shown to be material under Brady because the defense offered only speculation that the information might help and did not show a reasonable probability of a different trial outcome if disclosed.
- The court held Brady does not create a general right to discovery and does not require the government to produce broad, case-untethered investigative materials.
- The court also concluded the requested discovery went beyond what Rule 16 requires, particularly where the defendant did not identify specific evidence tied to his flight, his suitcase, or identifiable witnesses in this case.

## Legal Principles

- Brady requires the prosecution to disclose evidence that is favorable to the accused and material to guilt or punishment; it is not a general discovery rule.
- Evidence is “material” for Brady purposes only if there is a reasonable probability that, had it been disclosed, the result of the proceeding would have been different.
- A defendant cannot compel Brady production based on speculation that additional government files might contain useful information; materiality requires more than conjecture.
- Requests for broad investigative information about other crimes or other suspects, without a specific nexus to the defendant’s charged conduct, may be denied as overbroad and immaterial.
- Fed. R. Crim. P. 16 does not require the government to open unrelated investigative files simply because the defendant proposes a generalized third-party-culpability theory.

## Conclusion

United States v. Ekiyor is a pretrial discovery decision holding that Brady did not obligate the government to produce wide-ranging information about baggage-handler drug smuggling where the defendant offered only a generalized theory and failed to show that the requested materials were material to whether he knowingly imported and possessed cocaine found in a locked suitcase tagged in his name and opened with his key.


United States v. Ekiyor, 89 F. Supp. 3d 928 (2015)