Opinion ID: 198229
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Nancy Muniz

Text: 65 At trial, one of the government's witnesses, Nancy Muniz, claimed that she was employed as a financial consultant at Merrill Lynch. After trial, this testimony was discovered to be false; Muniz was in fact making her living as a prostitute. The district court found that [t]here is no suggestion that the government was aware of Ms. Muniz's perjury. July 22, 1997, Mem. and Order at 3. Subsequent to the trial, and allegedly unbeknownst to the prosecution, appellant ascertained that the Framingham police had charged Muniz with operating a motor vehicle without a license, a charge which was pending at the time of her testimony. See id. at 1. 66 We begin by noting the relevant legal standards. A Brady error occurs when the prosecution suppresses material evidence that is favorable to the accused. See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995). In most circumstances, exculpatory evidence is material only if there is a  'reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.'  Id. at 435, 115 S.Ct. 1555 (quoting United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 685, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985)). We refer to this as the Bagley standard. 67 A standard of materiality more favorable to the defendant applies, however, when previously undisclosed evidence reveals that the prosecutor knowingly used perjured testimony or, equivalently, knowingly failed to disclose that testimony used to convict the defendant was false. See Bagley, 473 U.S. at 678-80, 105 S.Ct. 3375. In such situations,  'a conviction ... is fundamentally unfair, and must be set aside if there is any reasonable likelihood that the false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury.'  Kyles, 514 U.S. at 433 n. 7, 115 S.Ct. 1555 (quoting United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 103, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976)). We refer to this as the Agurs standard. 68 Here, the district court assumed that the government should have known about Muniz's perjury, and applied the Agurs standard of materiality. See July 22, 1997 Mem. and Order at 3. Applying this standard, it found that there is no reasonable possibility that one more piece of impeaching evidence tarnishing an already blemished witness by degree rather than kind, could have affected the jury's judgment. Id. at 4. With regard to the traffic citation, the district court found that it was not Brady material. See id. at 5. Applying the Kyles /Bagley materiality test, the court found that had the jury been made aware of the infraction, there is no reasonable possibility, much less a probability, id., that it would have influenced the verdict. 69 The district court's rulings were not an abuse of discretion. Muniz admitted to the jurors that she had supported a thirteen-year addiction to heroin by working as a prostitute, that she had frequently used other illegal drugs, that she had offered herself to the government as an informant because she needed the money, and most importantly, that she had lied to the grand jury about having been a prostitute in the past. The jury was already on notice about her tendency to commit perjury. 70 In addition, the thrust of her testimony, that defendants Rodrguez, Rosario and Famania were in the business of distributing crack cocaine, was corroborated by the testimony of five other cooperating witnesses, and by police surveillance and physical evidence. Even examining her perjury under the Agurs standard, there is little chance that her false testimony affected the verdict. 71 Similarly, the district court's ruling with respect to the traffic citation does not constitute an abuse of discretion. Assuming arguendo, but with little basis in the record, that the prosecutors or their agents knew or should have known of the information in question, we agree with the district court that there is no reasonable possibility that their lack of awareness of a traffic citation would have influenced their verdict. See United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1216, 1220 n. 5 (1st Cir.1993)([O]ur decisions ... have [not] been sympathetic to new trial claims based solely on the discovery of additional information useful for impeaching a government witness.).