Opinion ID: 2567623
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 28

Heading: Montez's information and arrangement

Text: On November 13, 1980, the district attorney's office was informed that Montez wished to snitch off Saucedo. Then Deputy District Attorney Ito arranged with Deputy Los Angeles City Attorney Timothy Hogan that in exchange for Montez's information and agreement to testify against Saucedo, the city attorney's office would not oppose the district attorney's request to modify Montez's 90-day sentence for a recent misdemeanor conviction to an appropriate probationary term. The arrangement was never disclosed to petitioner. As earlier noted, the referee found that if the evidence concerning Montez that the prosecution possessed had been timely disclosed to the defense, Montez would have been available as a witness for the defense and would have testified at petitioner's capital trial, credibly and in conformance with what he wrote in the Montez letter concerning Saucedo's confession to killing Hosey. Petitioner's trial counsel, Ingber, declared that if the undisclosed information regarding Barnes, Montez, Sanchez, and McDonald had been timely disclosed to him, he would have used it to impeach Saucedo at petitioner's capital trial. Counsel's declaration is consistent with the referee's findings that the defense would have used the undisclosed evidence of the prosecution's arrangements with other potential witnesses to effectively cross-examine Saucedo. The information and arrangements evidence set forth above is favorable to petitioner since, like the Montez letter, it both involves and likely would have led to the jury's hearing of Joe Saucedo's repeated, detailed admissions to stabbing Hosey, destroying evidence, and developing a false alibi, all of which were inconsistent with his trial testimony inculpating petitioner and favorably characterizing his own role. The evidence also is material in that had the defense been able to illuminate for the jury the pressure that was placed on Saucedo to testify against petitioner, it is reasonably probable the defense's impeachment efforts would have borne fruit and the jury would have discounted Saucedo's testimony. Moreover, the prosecution's disclosure obligation turns on the collective effect of all suppressed evidence favorable to the defense, not on the effect of such evidence considered item by item. ( Kyles v. Whitley, supra, 514 U.S. at p. 436, 115 S.Ct. 1555.) While the definition of ... materiality in terms of the cumulative effect of suppression must accordingly be seen as leaving the government with a degree of discretion, it must also be-understood as imposing a corresponding burden. On the one side, showing that the prosecution knew of an item of favorable evidence unknown to the defense does not amount to a Brady violation, without more. But the prosecution, which alone can know what is undisclosed, must be assigned the consequent responsibility to gauge the likely net effect of all such evidence and make the disclosure when the point of `reasonable probability' is reached. ( Id. at p. 437,115 S.Ct. 1555.) Respondent argues that notwithstanding the undisclosed evidence was mainly favorable to petitioner, it was not material because there is no reasonable probability that its nondisclosure deprived petitioner of a fair trial. Saucedo would have vehemently denied ever making such confessions, asserts respondent, to the effect that all the undisclosed evidence would have shown in this case was that petitioner was not the actual stabber of Hosey. However, the undisputed evidence still showed that petitioner was an aider and abettor to Hosey's murder. We disagree the evidence was not material. The referee found that the credibility of Saucedo's denial of making the confessions is suspect, while the information contained in the Montez letter is credible and is corroborated by evidence from other persons who each relate that Saucedo gave essentially the same confession to them. That the undisclosed evidence concerning Saucedo's confessions to the Hosey killing may be consistent with petitioner's guilt of that crime as well, on an aiding and abetting theory, does not undermine the referee's findings concerning the impact the evidence would have had at the penalty phase of petitioner's trial viz., that the defense would have used the undisclosed rebuttal evidence to effectively cross-examine Saucedo, impeaching him on a matter that was of major significance concerning whether the jury would recommend life in prison or the death penalty. (Cf. In re Hardy (2007) 41 Cal.4th 977, 1036-1036, 63 Cal.Rptr.3d 845, 163 P.3d 853.) Nor does the possibility of petitioner's liability for aiding and abetting the Hosey killing foreclose the referee's further finding that had petitioner's counsel in the Hosey matter possessed the undisclosed evidence, he would have advised petitioner not to plead guilty. While the undisclosed evidence does not conclusively absolve petitioner of involvement in the Hosey murder, much of it tends to exculpate him. Although Patricia Torres's statement to policethat she saw petitioner hold a knife by Hosey's neck and, later, chase him down the streetarguably is consistent with petitioner's culpability as an aider and abettor, her statement is the only evidence (apart from Saucedo's self-serving testimony) that petitioner aided and abetted the killing, and at trial she claimed she could not remember what happened. Moreover, Torres was a friend of Saucedo who had known him for four or five years and who lived in the neighborhood. Thus, had the defense possessed all the undisclosed evidenceincluding Montez's statement that Saucedo had admitted chasing and stabbing Hosey and thereafter persuading his girlfriend to falsely corroborate his story claiming otherwisepetitioner might have argued it was likely that Saucedo had persuaded or coerced Torres to give a similarly false statement. In any event, the referee reasonably concluded that Saucedo's testimony at the Black penalty phase was a significant factor in Attorney Garber's decision to advise petitioner to plead guilty to the Hosey murder. Moreover, the court ultimately relied upon and accepted Saucedo's testimony as the factual basis for petitioner's guilty plea in the Hosey case. Respondent cites U.S. v. Ruiz (2002) 536 U.S. 622, 122 S.Ct. 2450, 153 L.Ed.2d 586, where the United States Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not require prosecutors to disclose material impeachment evidence prior to entering a plea agreement with a criminal defendant. ( Id. at p. 633,122 S.Ct. 2450.) In reaching this conclusion, the high court stressed the Brady right's relation to the fairness of a trial, along with the long-standing recognition that a defendant may waive various constitutional rights in the context of a guilty plea despite various forms of misapprehension under which [he or she] might labor. ( Ruiz, at p. 630, 122 S.Ct. 2450.) The court also found persuasive the likely detriment to the plea bargaining process and the efficient administration of justice in a requirement that prosecutors disclose material impeachment evidence, noting that the added value ... of the [preplea disclosure of material impeachment evidence] is often limited, for it depends upon the defendant's independent awareness of the details of the Government's case. ( Id. at p. 631, 122 S.Ct. 2450.) Ruiz does not foreclose relief from petitioner's conviction of the Hosey murder. Ruiz by its terms applies only to material impeachment evidence, and the high court emphasized that the government there had agreed to provide `any information establishing the factual innocence of the defendant' regardless. ( U.S. v. Ruiz, supra, 536 U.S. at p. 631, 122 S.Ct. 2450.) Here, although the undisclosed evidence would indeed have served an impeachment function in petitioner's penalty trial by casting doubt on the veracity of Saucedo's testimony, in the context of the Hosey case the undisclosed evidence also would have tended to exculpate petitioner by showing that another person did the killing. Nor need we decide the broad question whether or to what extent the prosecution has a duty to disclose evidence favorable to a criminal defendant before the defendant pleads guilty. [6] The prosecution here plainly had a duty to disclose the evidence at issue before the penalty phase of petitioner's capital trial and, had it done so, petitioner necessarily would have received it before he decided whether to plead guilty to the murder of Hosey. We therefore conclude petitioner has demonstrated entitlement to relief from his second degree murder conviction.