Around 4:30 PM on September 24, 1971, James Sewell and Linda Agurs (a prostitute) checked into a motel posing as a married couple.

About 15 minutes after they checked in, motel employees heard screaming coming from the room Sewell and Agurs had booked.

The jury chose a foreman, deliberated, and found Agurs guilty of second-degree murder within 25 minutes.

The majority held that the prosecution was required to disclose "evidence creates a reasonable doubt that did not otherwise exist.

[1] Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented, arguing that the majority's decision cabined the meaning of "materiality" so much as to place criminal defendants at a disadvantage.