DOJ-OGR-00020780.pdf

Case 22-1426, Document 57, 02/28/2023, 3475900, Page162 of 208 A-158 Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 207 Filed 04/16/21 Page 21 of 34 Moreover, the Government has agreed to disclose their names in advance of trial. There is thus no unfairness here. See Stringer, 730 F.3d at 126. As discussed below, the Court will require the parties to negotiate and propose a full schedule for all remaining pretrial disclosures. IV. The perjury charges are legally tenable The Court turns next to Maxwell's motion to dismiss the perjury counts stemming from her answers to questions in a deposition in a civil case. She contends that these charges are legally deficient because the questions posed were fundamentally ambiguous and the questions were not material to the subject of the deposition. The Court concludes that the charges are legally tenable and Maxwell's defenses are appropriately left to the jury. The applicable perjury statute imposes criminal penalties on anyone who "in any proceeding before or ancillary to any court . . . knowingly makes any false material declaration." 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a). Testimony is perjurious only if it is knowingly false and is material to the proceeding in which the defendant offered it. A. The questions posed were not too ambiguous to support a perjury charge The requirement of knowing falsity requires that a witness believe that their testimony is false. United States v. Lighte, 782 F.2d 367, 372 (2d Cir. 1986). As a general matter, "[a] jury is best equipped to determine the meaning that a defendant assigns to a specific question." Id. Courts have acknowledged a narrow exception for questions that are so fundamentally ambiguous or imprecise that the answer to them cannot legally be false. Id. at 372, 375; see also United States v. Wolfson, 437 F.2d 862, 878 (2d Cir. 1970). A question is fundamentally ambiguous only if reasonable people could not agree on its meaning in context. Lighte, 782 F.2d at 375. The existence of some arguable ambiguity does not foreclose a perjury charge against a witness who understood the question. 21 DOJ-OGR-00020780