Opinion ID: 419603
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: perjury counts

Text: 31 Rocca was indicted on three counts of perjury. Counts IX and X charge her with giving false testimony before the grand jury investigating Auto Alley. Count XI charges her with giving false testimony in a suppression hearing in the criminal case of Ralph Alley. The district court, finding that the testimony was not material, and was not literally false under the terms of Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973), dismissed counts X and XI. We affirm as to count X but reverse as to count XI.
32 Count X of the indictment charges Rocca with giving false testimony before the grand jury because she knew that the 'State of Maine True Copy' stamps belonged to Walter Harlan and that said stamps as well as the Maine microfilm records were used by Auto Alley to create fictitious Maine registrations for motor vehicles the odometers of which had been reset and altered. The infirmities with this indictment are readily apparent by comparing the charge with the allegedly perjurious testimony cited in the indictment. 5 While Rocca's testimony was evasive and unresponsive, she never stated that the Maine true copy stamps did not belong to Walter Harlan. Indeed she was not asked if the stamps belonged to him or whether she knew whose they were. The questions that were potentially most relevant to the issues charged in the indictment were, Who is they, the people who you are talking about, the people who are doing it? and What caused you to believe it was Walter Harlan's stuff? The former question referred, however, not to ownership of the stamps but to their use. Rocca cannot be charged for lying about her knowledge concerning who the stamps belonged to merely by responding to a question about her knowledge of the stamps' use. 6 See United States v. Tonelli, 577 F.2d 194 (3d Cir.1978); United States v. Williams, 536 F.2d 1202 (7th Cir.1976). 33 The question as to why Rocca believed it was Walter Harlan's stuff led to nothing more significant. Portions of the testimony deleted from the indictment suggest that stuff most likely referred to forged registrations, not the stamps. 7 But even assuming the jury could decide that stuff referred to the stamps, see United States v. Kehoe, 562 F.2d 65 (1st Cir.1977), the fact remains that the clear language of the question did not ask Rocca about her knowledge of the ownership of the stamps but as to the cause of her belief. The charge that she knew who owned the stamps and lied about her knowledge cannot, of course, be sustained by the fact that she said she did not know why she knew it was Harlan's stuff. As the Third Circuit has said, in order for a charge of perjury to be sustained, the true paragraph must track the false testimony. 577 F.2d at 199. That test is obviously not met here. 34 That the grand jury may have meant to ask Rocca about the ownership of the stamps and her knowledge of that is no cure. In Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973), the Supreme Court stated, 35 It is the responsibility of the lawyer to probe; testimonial interrogation, and cross-examination in particular, is a prying, pressing form of inquiry. If a witness evades, it is the lawyer's responsibility to recognize the evasion and to bring the witness back to the mark, to flush out the whole truth with the tools of adversary examination. 36 Id. at 358-59, 93 S.Ct. at 599-600. 37 Count X of the indictment is no less deficient as to its second charge--that Rocca testified falsely because she knew that the stamps and microfilms were used by Auto Alley to create fictitious Maine registrations for motor vehicles the odometers of which had been reset and altered. Rocca, however, never denied that the stamps and microfilms were used to create fictitious registrations. She merely never mentioned that the fictitious registrations were for cars with tampered odometers. When asked why they used the microfilm, she replied: 38 I just assumed it was to save a trip for the drivers. Then again, that's my assumption again. It would save drivers money. You know, you have to pay $35 for a driver to go up and get a copy of the registration. 39 When she was then asked Would it surprise you to learn that they sold cars--? she did not deny that she knew that cars were being sold with tampered odometers, but merely stated: Yes, you told me that before. 40 The government argues that from this testimony one can imply a denial of the fact that the microfilms were being used to falsify cars with tampered odometers. This might indeed be a fair implication of the testimony, but as the Supreme Court stated in Bronston, we are not dealing with casual conversation. And the statute does not make it a criminal act for a witness to willfully state any material matter that implies any material matter that he does not believe to be true. 409 U.S. at 357-58, 93 S.Ct. at 599. Where the government cannot prove that the defendant's testimony, although incomplete and evasive, was not actually a false response to the question posed, the district court does not err in dismissing the indictment. 41 The government argues that Bronston does not apply here because the questions asked of Rocca were ambiguous. It is true that where an answer may or may not be false depending upon possible interpretations of an ambiguous question, it is for the jury to decide whether the defendant has committed perjury. United States v. Kehoe, 562 F.2d 65 (1st Cir.1977). See also United States v. Bell, 623 F.2d 1132 (5th Cir.1980); United States v. Cuesta, 597 F.2d 903 (5th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 964, 100 S.Ct. 452, 62 L.Ed.2d 377 (1980); United States v. Matthews, 589 F.2d 442 (9th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 972, 99 S.Ct. 1538, 59 L.Ed.2d 790 (1979). In such a case there is an actual possibility that the defendant intended to and did in fact give a response that was literally false. But where, as here, the government hinges its charge on the false implications of a statement that is not alleged to be false in itself, we think that Bronston applies and warrants the dismissal of the indictment.
42 We can find no similar faults with Count XI. 8 In the suppression hearing Rocca was asked to tell the circumstances in which she became familiar with the stamps. She replied, They were found in the garage at 170 Valley Street in the back of the garage in boxes. She also stated that she then showed the stamps to Mr. Alley and he had never seen them before. The government charged that this testimony was false because she had seen the stamps and knew that Mr. Alley had seen them prior to the incidents described in her testimony. If this charge is proven true, Rocca's statements would indeed be false and might constitute perjury, should the other elements of the crime also be met. 43 Rocca argues, however, that her statements cannot be perjurious because they were not material to the proceeding. It is undisputed that a statement must be material to a proceeding in order to constitute perjury within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1623. The test for materiality, however, is a broad one--whether the false testimony was capable of influencing the tribunal on the issue before it. United States v. Giarratano, 622 F.2d 153, 156 (5th Cir.1980). See also United States v. Berardi, 629 F.2d 723 (2d Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 995, 101 S.Ct. 534, 66 L.Ed.2d 293 (1980). Given this broad test, we find that the district court erred in dismissing the count. 44 The issue before the court in Alley's suppression hearing was whether or not he had a sufficient expectation of privacy in the evidence to invoke the exclusionary rule. That being the case, the question whether Rocca and he knew about the stamps and microfilm were clearly relevant to the establishment of his interest in the items. Her responses, suggesting that Alley did not have a great deal of interest in the stamps, made it less likely that they were his personal property to which he might have had a reasonable expectation of privacy warranting the protection of the exclusionary rule. That her evidence on this point might not have been dispositive of the issue before the court is immaterial, as long as the statements have some potential for misleading the tribunal; the element of materiality is satisfied and the indictment should not have been dismissed. We accordingly reverse the district court's dismissal of Count XI. 45 Affirmed in part; vacated in part; reversed in part, and remanded for proceedings not inconsistent herewith.