Case Information
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T HE U TAH C OURT OF A PPEALS
C YNTHIA M AGALLANES , Petitioner and Appellant, v.
S OUTH S ALT L AKE C ITY , Respondent and Appellee. Memorandum Decision No. 20131001-CA Filed June 18, 2015 Third District Court, Salt Lake Department The Honorable Todd M. Shaughnessy No. 130903195
Michael P. Studebaker, Attorney for Appellant Sarah E. Spencer, Lyn L. Cheswell, and Paul H. Roberts, Attorneys for Appellee J UDGE S TEPHEN L. R OTH authored this Memorandum Decision, in which J UDGES G REGORY K. O RME and J. F REDERIC V OROS J R . concurred.
ROTH, Judge: Cynthia Magallanes appeals the district court’s dismissal
of her petition for postconviction relief. We affirm. Magallanes was charged with driving under the influence
of alcohol and other offenses. As a result of plea negotiations, Magallanes pleaded guilty in justice court in November 2009 to impaired driving. She had been arrested by former Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Lisa Steed. In May 2013, Magallanes filed a petition in the district court under the Post-Conviction Remedies Act (the PCRA) to have her guilty plea set aside. Magallanes asserted that she had recently learned that Trooper Steed had been the subject of discipline for falsifying reports, *2 providing questionable testimony, and failing to follow department policy in a number of other DUI cases. Magallanes asserted that Trooper Steed’s supervisors were aware of Trooper Steed’s conduct and that the prosecution’s failure to disclose this information to her at the time of her plea violated her due process rights. Had this information been disclosed to her at the time of her plea, Magallanes argued, her ‚case would have had a different outcome.‛ The district court dismissed the motion, explaining that
‚post-conviction remedies are limited in the light of an accused
entering a guilty plea‛ and that Magallanes bore ‚the heavy
burden of establishing that her plea was not voluntarily and
knowingly entered.‛ Citing
Medel v. State
,
¶5 Magallanes appeals. We review a district court’s decision
to dismiss a petition for postconviction relief for correctness.
Medel
,
her claim that her right to due process was violated by the
prosecution’s failure to disclose information about Trooper
Steed’s misconduct prior to the entry of her plea. Magallanes
argues that the information about Trooper Steed was ‚material‛
to her ‚guilt or punishment‛ and the prosecution was therefore
required to disclose it under
Brady v. Maryland
, 373 U.S. 83
(1963), to ensure fairness in her proceedings. She argues that this
evidence was material to her guilt because without it she was
‚unable to adequately defend herself to show that [Trooper]
Steed falsely stopped her vehicle.‛ She asserts that ‚[Trooper]
Steed is untruthful at best. As such, any statements [Trooper
Steed made] about the basis for a stop should be presumed to be
untruthful.‛ Magallanes contends that
Brady
requires disclosure
by the prosecution of any material evidence, even if it is solely
impeachment evidence because, under
Brady
, ‚there is no
difference between exculpatory and impeachment [evidence].‛
She also contends that the district court erred in determining she
needed to show that the newly discovered evidence supported
her factual innocence in order to prevail on that claim. We considered almost identical arguments in
Monson v.
Salt Lake City
, 2015 UT App 136. In
Monson
, the defendant had
pleaded guilty to driving under the influence after an arrest by
Trooper Steed.
Id.
¶ 2. The defendant in that case also challenged
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the district court’s dismissal of his petition for relief under the
PCRA on the grounds that the prosecution had ‚failed to
disclose both the internal-investigation report and the evidence
that Trooper Steed had been disciplined for violation of
department policies.‛
Id.
¶¶ 5–6. This court reiterated that ‚once
a defendant has pled guilty, the ‘only avenue for challenging his
conviction is to claim that he did not voluntarily or intelligently
enter his plea.’‛
Id.
¶ 6 (quoting
Medel
,
has failed to demonstrate how the evidence of Trooper Steed’s misconduct constitutes more than impeachment evidence or demonstrates her factual innocence. Magallanes has not argued that she is innocent of the crime to which she pleaded guilty. Nor has she claimed that any of the violations for which Trooper Steed has previously been investigated occurred in her specific case. Magallanes has identified no impropriety in the manner in which Trooper Steed executed the arrest and, beyond allegations that Trooper Steed is generally untruthful, has not asserted a lack of a factual basis for the stop of Magallanes’s vehicle or for the ensuing charges. Thus, the evidence of Trooper Steed’s untruthfulness or failure to follow departmental policy would, ‚at best, affect[] her credibility before the jury, and it would therefore have served merely as impeachment evidence.‛ See id. ¶ 10. Magallanes contends that the information about Trooper
Steed ‚is more than mere impeachment evidence‛ because of the *5 effect she believes it would have on Trooper Steed’s credibility at any trial. But, as the Utah Supreme Court noted in Wickham v. Galetka , 2002 UT 72, 61 P.3d 978, ‚[a]lthough the new evidence offered by [the defendant] may have strong impeachment value—even to the point of calling into question a witness’s credibility—the strength of the evidence does not change the fact that it is being offered solely for impeachment purposes.‛ Id. ¶ 14. The Wickham court further concluded that it is ‚the purpose for which the evidence is offered that determines whether certain evidence is ‘merely impeachment evidence.’‛ Id. ¶ 15. Because the sole purpose of the evidence offered here was to impeach Trooper Steed and because ‚it does not negate a specific element of the prosecution’s case‛ and is not ‚directly related to the charges against [Magallanes],‛ we reject Magallanes’s claim that the evidence constituted more than ‚‘mere[] impeachment evidence.’‛ See id. ¶¶ 14–15. We therefore see no error in the district court’s determination that because Magallanes failed to show that the undisclosed evidence demonstrated her factual innocence or rendered her plea unknowing or involuntary, she was not entitled to have her guilty plea set aside. We affirm.