Opinion ID: 365884
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: truth and perjury

Text: 97 Taylor challenges his conviction for false declarations before a grand jury arguing that the statements upon which Count VIII was based were literally true. Taylor testified to the grand jury as follows: BY MR. HOGUE: 98 Q. What about Pico Lopez? 99 A. Well I have certainly never interceded for Pico Lopez, sir, on any type of matter. 100 Q. You never passed on the fact that there was a Federal Grand Jury investigating his narcotics activities? 101 A. No, sir. Never. In fact, I have no knowledge that that has ever been a fact. But had I did (sic) have any knowledge to that effect I would certainly not pass it on to him or to anyone. BY MR. JAMES: 102 Q. Well have you ever speculated to anyone that we were conducting an investigation into Pico's narcotics activities? 103
104 At trial, the government produced the following transcript of a conversation between appellant Taylor and Eddie Callahan at the Callahan Bail Bond office: 5 105 Callahan: No, no more, listen, after awhile, I had, I mean I don't I don't want no part of the mother ______ (Caccamo). 106 Taylor: He's responsible for you bein' before that ______ Grand Jury. 107 Callahan: I imagine so. 108 Taylor: He's responsible for Pico being down there. 109 Callahan: Yeah. 110 Taylor: Let one tell ya somethin', now you can tell Pico this, they think he's dealing in ______ cocaine an' ______. 111 Callahan: Who? 112 Taylor: The feds. 113 Callahan: They uh, Pico uh Carl Caccamo's runnin' cocaine? 114 Taylor: No, the feds think Pico is. 115 Callahan: Aw. 116 Taylor: Yeah, I'm tellin' you. 117 The essence of Taylor's appellate argument is that at no point did Taylor tell Callahan what the grand jury was investigating. Taylor explains the transcript by noting that the word feds could encompass numerous federal agencies and investigative bodies, whereas the questions which he answered before the grand jury only referred to the investigation of the grand jury. 118 Taylor relies on Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973), to support his reasoning. In Bronston, the Supreme Court reversed appellants perjury conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1621 where appellants grand jury answer was literally true, but unresponsive. The Court noted that the conviction would have to be reversed even if appellant intentionally misled his questioner by his answer and even if his answer is false by negative implication. However, an answer that is responsive and false on its face does not come within Bronston's literal truth analysis simply because the defendant can postulate unstated premises of the question that would make his answer literally true. United States v. Kehoe, 562 F.2d 65, 68-69 (1st Cir. 1977). Similarly, Bronston does not deal with the situation where a defendant has given a yes or no answer, the truth of which can be ascertained only in the context of the question posed. United States v. Chapin, 169 U.S.App.D.C. 303, 309, 515 F.2d 1274, 1280 (1975). Bronston considered only the situation where a declarative statement made to a grand jury was true no matter what the context in which it was given. 119 Appellant's Bronston analysis suffers from another serious flaw. In Bronston, the grand jury statement was non-responsive, deliberately misleading but true. In this case, appellant's grand jury testimony was responsive but deliberately false. Taylor alleges that his statement to Callahan about the feds is ambiguous. But this was a decision for the jury. Considering the context of the Taylor-Callahan conversation, the jury could reasonably conclude that Taylor related to Callahan that the federal grand jury was investigating Lopez' narcotics activity, that the appellant's answers before the grand jury were false beyond a reasonable doubt, and that defendant knew the answers to be false at the time he gave them. See United States v. Parr, 516 F.2d 458 (5th Cir. 1975).