Opinion ID: 796946
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Eduardo Pubill Conviction

Text: 46 Following the government's informative motion of October 9, 2003, regarding Eduardo Pubill's conviction for structuring financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements, Misla moved to dismiss the indictment or, in the alternative, for a new trial. The judge denied the motion. 47 This issue presents a slight puzzle with respect to our standard of review, though it is easily resolved. The denial of the motion appears to be subject to our review under the standards given in Brady and Giglio, just as the delayed disclosure of the Form 302 interview with Torres was, as discussed above. The government's informative motion describes this as a case of nondisclosure, which would subject them to a relatively tough standard of review if we were to review under Brady. See Agurs, 427 U.S. at 104, 96 S.Ct. 2392 (whether disclosure might have affected the outcome of the trial). However, it's not clear that this is nondisclosure — or even delayed disclosure — since the court informed both parties on December 9, 2002, during trial, of exactly this conviction. The trouble arises because of the court's error in noting the case as no. 92-094 rather than no. 92-194 in its December 9 order. Perhaps as a result of that clerical error, though we can't know for sure, no party seems to have followed up on that particular case, and thus no party informed the court of its error in reporting the case number. 7 48 As the district court itself noted after receiving the government's informative motion, 49 [t]he fact that this motion has been filed at all leads to confusion since the Court, despite the government's representation during trial that Mr. Eduardo Pubill-Rivera had not been convicted, took the initiative to probe into the matter. The result of that inquiry was the disclosure to the parties of Mr. Eduardo Pubill-Rivera's conviction and sentence. . . . We do not anticipate any controversy arising from the information provided in the government's last motion since this is not newly discovered information but rather data disclosed and utilized during the trial. 50 Sealed Order, October 10, 2003. We agree with the district court's reasoning. This is at worst an instance of delayed disclosure, since the information came out during trial, and thus we again ask whether defendant's counsel was prevented by the delay from using the disclosed material effectively in preparing and presenting the defendant's case. Ingraldi, 793 F.2d at 411-12. Our standard of review of the denial of the motion is, again, abuse of discretion. 8 Catano, 65 F.3d at 227. We find no such abuse here, simply because Misla was not prevented from preparing by the delay. In his brief, Misla constructs an unlikely string of events: knowledge of Eduardo Pubill's conviction for a financial crime would have led to him being called to testify; he would then have disclosed the money laundering scheme with Ramos; the judge would have been forced to instruct the jury that Ramos was a perjurer; and this would have so undermined his credibility, as the government's main witness, as to make conviction of Misla impossible. This is inference piled upon inference, particularly since Ramos had already been impeached over the Pubill connection (not to mention his own involvement in the conspiracy at issue in the instant case). More fundamentally, because Misla was provided this information during trial, but apparently did not pursue it, we cannot say that the delay caused any prejudice. 51 Finally, it should not be forgotten that Ramos was the witness, not Pubill. While prior convictions of Ramos would clearly be material under Giglio, it is not so clear that the conviction of a person with whom that witness did business is also material. At some point, the human chain of bad behavior becomes too attenuated to be relevant to the trial at hand. Here, however, we are not called upon to make that determination, because in any event Misla was not prejudiced. Therefore, the judge did not abuse her discretion.