Lead Opinion
In this hаbeas action, Joseph Puertas challenges his Michigan state-court convictions for one count of operating a criminal enterprise and six counts of delivering less than 50 grams of cocaine. The district court denied the petition. Because the resolution of Puertas’s constitutional claims by the state courts was not contrary to, and did not amount to an unreasonable application of, Supreme Court precedent, we affirm.
I.
In 1997, when police suspected Puertas of selling drugs from his Oakland County, Michigan bowling alley, the Megabowl, they hired an informant to confirm their suspicions. Working with the Michigan State Police, members of the Oakland County Sheriffs Department hired Joseph Sweeney to purchase cocaine from Puertas at the bowling alley.
At Puertas’s state-court trial, police and Sweeney testified that between August 19 and November 18, 1997, Sweeney completed six controlled buys of cocaine from Puertas or his co-defendant. Before each buy, the officers searched Sweeney to ensure that he did not possess any drugs and watched him during his encounters with Puertas. After the sixth buy, police executed search warrants for 12 locations associated with Puertas. Although the investigators involved in these coordinated searches did not seize any drugs, two drug-detecting dogs alerted to nine different safes owned by Puertas. Officers and experts testified at trial that the dogs were most likely alerting to a lingering odor from drugs that recently had been removed from the safes. The officers also recovered $1.9 million in cash and property during the searches. Based on this evidence, the jury convicted Puertas of operating a criminal enterprise and of selling cocaine.
Puertas appealed to the Michigan court of appeals. While that appeal was pending, he obtained a copy of a state police report investigating allegations of public corruption stemming from, among other law-enforcement activity, the police investigation of him. The report details interviews with officers involved in the Puertas investigation and other law-enforcement agents who had contact with those officers. It concludes that the allegations of public corruption in connection with the Puertas investigation were unfounded. Although not all of the information in the report directly concerns Puertas, parts of it concern the credibility of some of the participants in the Puertas investigation and parts of it contain statements from several of the witnesses in his case. Ruling that the prosecution had a duty to give Puertas the report before or during trial, the trial court set aside Puertas’s conviction and granted him a new trial.
On appeal, the Michigan court of appeals reversed the decision to grant a new trial and affirmed Puertas’s convictions. People v. Puertas, Nos. 224173, 224286,
On June 23, 2003, Puertas filed this habeas petition. The district court denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability on all issues. Puertas v. Overton,
Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), we may grant a habeas petition if the state court’s adjudication of the claim “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); see Williams v. Taylor,
A.
Puertas first argues that the prosecution violated its duty under the Due Process Clause and Brady v. Maryland,
The Michigan court of appeals held that Puertаs satisfied the first element of a Brady claim because the state police report had impeachment value. Puertas,
Because the state court’s rejection of Puertas’s arguments under the third prong of the Brady test does not unreasonably apply controlling Supreme Court precedent, we shall address only that aspect of the state court of appeals’ decision and shall affirm the district court’s deci
Attempting to counter this conclusion, Puertas raises the following arguments. He first points to the report’s value in attacking the testimony of the informant, Sweeney, the prosecution’s lead witness. With the benefit of the report, he claims, “he would have called additional police witnesses to comment on” Sweeney’s “lack of credibility.” Puertas Br. at 30. Although Puertas does not specify whom he would have called or which portions of the report would have prompted this action, statements by two officers in the report concern Sweeney’s credibility. Everingham stated that he “personally did not believe that [Sweeney] was reliable enough to work this type of investigation.” JA 136-e. And Lieutenant Bill Kuyck stated that “he was uncomfortable because he has known [Sweeney] for some time and believes that [he] has no credibility.” JA 138. In addition to claiming that he would have called additional witnesses (presumably Everingham and Kuyck) had he been given the report, Puertas submits that the report wоuld have made him “aware,” Puertas Br. at 30, that during Sweeney’s interview with the investigating officer, Sweeney stated that “he was agreeable to anything that .-.. Quisenberry or Deputy Gary Miller wanted to undertake.” JA 141.
Even without having the summaries of the interviews contained in the report in hand before trial, the defense vigorously attacked Sweeney’s credibility at trial, exploring and attempting to exploit these precise lines of impeachment. Sweeney admitted that he was addicted to drugs and alcohol and that he had been convicted of two felonies involving dishonesty. Puertas,
Nor was Puertas prejudiced by not having access to Everingham’s and Kuyck’s statements in the report, as he had ample opportunities to elicit this information himself before trial. Not only could Puertas have sought to depose these potential government witnesses prior to his criminal trial, see Fed.R.Crim.P. 15(a)(1), but he in fact did depose Everingham in connection with a government-initiated civil-forfeiture actiоn that arose from the criminal investigation. During this deposition, which occurred four months before his criminal trial, and two days before the first newspaper articles about the investigation, Everingham stated that he had “concerns” about the Puertas investigation and stated that he had discussed the investigation with Kuyck. See Everingham Dep. at 14 (June 16, 1999); id. at 90-91. With this deposition testimony in hand, plus the information later reported by local newspapers about Everingham’s allegations, plus Puertas’s attorney’s knowledge of the state investigation, Puertas not only knew that Everingham had “concerns” about the investigation but also had ample opportunity to develop further support for this theory before trial had he wished.
Puertas separately claims that the report would have made him “aware” that Sweeney “had made a contrary statement as to who identified [Puertas] as a suspect.” Puertas Br. at 30. According to the report, Sweeney said that the “decision to investigate” Puertas and his bowling alley “was Deputy Miller’s idea.” JA 141. But at trial Sweeney testified that he first discussed investigating Puertas with Quisenberry, not Miller, although when pressed he stated that he could not remember if any other officer participated in that conversation. See Trial Tr. at 65-66 (Oct. 19,1999).
In view of the many other ways in which the defense attacked Sweeney’s credibility, the advantage that Puertas could have gained by contrasting Sweeney’s statement at trial (that Quisenberry first identified Puertas as a suspect) with the statement in the report (that the decision to investigate Puertas was “Miller’s idea”) arises only at the margins. Additional testimony from police witnesses questioning Sweeney’s credibility would have been cumulative and accordingly of slight value. See Byrd v. Collins,
Q Yesterday, you testified that you had a discussion about going into the Megabowl, right?
A Um hm. Yes.
Q The discussion you said was with Quizenberry [sic] alone, correct?
A Correct.
Q Miller was there, correct?
A I don’t remember if he was or not....
Q You might have given a different answer at a different time?
A I don’t know. I mean I don’t remember.
Trial Tr. at 65 (Oct. 19,1999).
Puertas next claims that he could have used information in the report to attack the credibility of Quisenberry’s testimony in three ways. First, he “would have known, and offered as evidence,” Puertas Br. at 30, information in the report that one of the commanders of the investigation, Mаrk Menghini, said that Quisenberry “conducted a sloppy investigation and cut too many corners” and believed that Sweeney “was not very good and all the purchases were conducted by the informant with no undercover involvement,” JA 136-a. Second, Puertas says that Quisenberry’s statement in the report that “he did not keep dailies or notes on each transaction” amounted to new evidence. JA 133. Third, while Sweeney testified at trial “that he was paid $50 for the first transaction and $40 for the fourth,” Puertas Br. at 31, the report notes that Quisenberry said that Sweeney’s payment “would range from $150 to $200 each time” he completed a controlled buy from Puertas, JA 133. This discrepancy, Puertas suggests, shows that Quisenberry might have “ke[pt] the extra $100 or $150 on those two occasions” and that he “was using a phony drug investigation in order to supplement his pay.” Puertas Br. at 31-32.
Here too, however, Puertas already knew this information or knew enough about the topic to obtain more information through civil discovery in his forfeiture action or pre-trial criminal discovery. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 15(a)(1). In his forfeiture deposition, Everingham also stated that Menghini had expressed concerns about the case and about Sweeney. In view of this testimony, Puertas had knowledge of Menghini’s concerns. And had he wished to obtain additional information about those concerns, he could have interviewed Menghini about Quisenberry, and that is particularly so in view of Everingham’s deposition statement that Menghini “stood up and stated that in his 20 some years of service, he’s never sent an innocent man to prison and he wasn’t about to start with this one.” Everingham Dep. at 15 — 16 (June 16, 1999). The trial transcript also belies Puertas’s claim that he did not know that Quisenberry failed to keep notes on each transaction. See Trial Tr. at 243 (Oct. 28, 1999) (during closing argument, Puertas’s attorney stated that Quisenberry said, “I’m not going to take one note, okay? Not one note.....I’m never going to take a note as to what happened, unless there’s a deal”). And as to any discrepancy between Sweeney’s and Quisenberry’s statements regarding Sweeney’s compensation, Puertas has not explained why he could not have covered this pertinent topic in a pre-trial deposition of Quisenberry or Sweeney, or during trial. Nor has he explained why this $100 to $150 disсrepancy in pay does not at most reflect a confluence of Sweeney’s admittedly poor memory and Quisenberry’s poor record-keeping.
Puertas next argues that he would have challenged the search warrants in the
Puertas, finally, complains that he was prevented from “interview[ing] and call[ing] witnesses who corroborated that overtime reports had been falsified in order to corroborate false surveillance reports.” Puertas Br. at 30. Here, again, the record shows that Puertas knew about these allegations before trial. See Everingham Dep. at 18 — 22 (June 16, 1999) (describing when Quisenberry would tell him to fill out overtime slips for times he had not worked to create the appearance that he had been present conducting surveillance on the Puertas investigation). And during trial, Puertas’s attorney raised the allegations when he cross-examined Quisenberry, see Trial Tr. at 212 — 15 (Oct. 22, 1999) (asking Quisenberry about Everingham’s allegations), and mentioned them during his closing argument, see Trial Tr. at 245 (Oct. 28, 1999) (“Mr. Everingham accuses Mr. Quisenberry ... on a couple of occasions ... [of telling] them to fill out over time slips [to make it appear as though] he was there on the surveillance.”).
Our colleague raises an additional point that deserves consideration. As she sees it, Puertas was nonetheless prejudiced because “the Report itself, apart from its contents, has independent significance.” Dissent at-. But Puertas has not made this argument. Perhaps because the report itself rejects the allegations of police misconduct, Puertas premises his Brady prejudice claim not on the report’s existence but on the contents of the report, namely the statements and interviews in it that we have discussed above.
But even if Puertas had made this argument, the logic behind the position is not self-evident — that because the Michigan police “conducted an official investigation from which a Report resulted,” “the allegations had some amount of credibility and gravity” even if the report ultimately rejected the allegations. Id. at-. No evidence indicates what degree of “credibility and gravity” is needed to prompt the Michigan state police department to commence an “official investigation” (or whether the suggested distinction between “a general investigation” and “the official investigation,” id. at -, exists). And surely Puertas had sufficient information to develop this evidence, as his attorney knew about the investigation. Why Puertas chose to focus on the contents of the report rather than what it takes to start an official investigation is not in the record. But it hardly seems unusual that the defense would choose a strategy that focused not on the existence of an investigation (which determined that there was no police
No less importantly, no Supreme Court authority supports this theory. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The only case mentioned by the dissent, Strickler, involved documents that contained new, valuable information for the defense. See
B.
Puertas separately contends that the state court of appeals unreasonably applied Supreme Court precedent in denying his prosecutorial-misconduct claim. To prove prosecutorial misconduct, Puertas must show that the challenged remarks infected his trial with such unfairness that his resulting conviction was a denial of due process. See Byrd,
Puertas first claims that the prosecutor improperly argued facts not in evidence when he suggested that Puertas had planted a bag of harmless white powder that officers discovered in one of Puertas’s safes and that he did so as “a dig from that man who knew [the police] were coming.” JA 624. The next day, Puertas moved for a mistrial based in part on this statement, arguing that it improperly implied that Puertas was a drug dealer and had been tipped off about the search. The trial court ruled the statement was not “grounds for a mistrial” and noted that “[t]he jury is instructed that if the attorneys argue something that isn’t in evidence, they can’t consider it.” JA 643. Even “[a]ssuming that this reference to [Puertas’s] motive for placing the powder in the safe was an unreasonable and improper inference drawn from the evidence,” the court of appeals held that the “comment does not warrant relief because a special instruction would have cured any prejudice to defendants.” Puertas,
As an initial matter, the state court of appeаls did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent in holding that Puertas was not prejudiced by the comment for two reasons: first, because
Puertas next claims that the prosecutor violated his Fifth (and Fourteenth) Amendment right not to take the stand by commenting on his silence. See Griffin v. California,
The trial court denied the motion, expressing doubt that the jury ever heard the comment and noting that the jury instructions properly explained Puertas’s constitutional right to remain silent. The state court of appeals agreed, reasоning that the admission by Puertas’s counsel that he did not hear the statement supported the trial court’s conclusion that the jury likely did not hear it either. “In any event,” it noted, “we assume as we must that the jury instructions remedied the error to the extent one or more jurors heard the comment.” Puertas,
The state courts did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent in reaching this conclusion. Both before and after this comment allegedly was made, the trial court instructed the jurors that they may not draw negative inferences from Puertas’s failure to testify. Even if the jury did hear the comment, which seems unlikely in view of the trial court’s ring-side observations of the incident, the instructions properly mitigated any risk that the statement would affect the jury’s verdict. See Richardson v. Marsh,
Puertas next claims that the prosecutor improperly denigrated the defense when, in his closing, he said that the defense presented a case made up of “haze and smoke” and tried to distract the jury with “sound and fury,” “bombastic antics” and “smoke and haze and innuendo and insinuation,” accusing the defense of presenting evidence “designed to distract you from the truth in this case.” Puertas Br. at 42 — 43. While prosecutors may not make “unfounded and inflammatory attacks on the opposing advocate,” United
Having failed to object to the comments during trial, Puertas violated Michigan’s rule that defendants must preserve their claims for appellate review by raising them in the trial court and thus has procedurally defaulted the claim. Seymour v. Walker,
Puertas next argues that the prosecution made an improper civic-duty argument when it said the following during its closing argument:
After this case is done and then you are able to go home and talk to your loved ones about what the case was about or your neighbors or whoever it is and you get there and you’re in your backyard and you’re leaning over the fence and you’re talking to your neighbor and you say, yep, I just got done with this jury duty and we had this very interesting case. It was a drug case and a racketeering case and a conspiracy case and the Prosecutor had the actual person who bought the drugs from the two defendants and he had officers who actually witnesse[d] the transactions happen and they had $106,000 — .
JA 626.
Generally speaking, a prosecutor has a “duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction.” Viereck v. United States,
C.
Puertas also objects to the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury about missing evidence. Prior to trial, Puertas requested copies of affidavits prepared in support of search warrants involving controlled buys by Sweeney in an unrelated investigation before he began working on the Puertas investigation. When the prosecution was unable to locate the affidavits, Puertas asked the trial court “for some kind of instruction to the jury” on the missing affidavits. JA 516. Although the trial court denied Puertas’s request, it told Puertas he could “argue about it to the jury.” JA 612.
A state-law challenge to an allegedly defective jury instruction faces a stiff burden. The claimant must show that the flawed instructions “so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process.” Cupp v. Naughten,
The court of appeals did not unreasonably apply Naughten in reaching this conclusion. Because the missing evidence was at most tenuously connected to the case and because Puertas had ample opportunities to cross-examine Sweeney and the police about Sweeney’s credibility, the state appellate court could reasonably conclude that the trial court’s refusal to give the requested instruction did not deprive Puertas of a fair trial.
D.
Puertas, lastly, claims that the trial court improperly admitted evidence about the dog sniffs, claiming that the evidence had little or no probative value and was highly prejudicial. He also objects that the court rejected his request for a cautionary instruction about this evidence.
During the searches of Puertas’s property, two drug-detecting dogs alerted to nine safes that contained a substantial amount of U.S. currency but did not contain illegal drugs. At trial, two forensic experts and two canine patrol officers testified about the training of the dogs and explained that the dogs’ alerts indicated that narcotics recently must have been inside the safes. The trial court rеjected Puertas’s objection to this evidence and denied his request for a special limiting instruction to the effect that the drug-sniffing-dog evidence has little value as proof and that he could not be convicted on the basis of this evidence alone.
A trial court’s error in applying state evidentiary law does “not rise to the level of [a] federal constitutional claim[] warranting relief in a habeas action unless the error renders the proceeding so fundamentally unfair as to deprive the petitioner of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.” McAdoo v. Elo,
In attacking this ruling, Puertas argues that a considerable amount of United States currency contains residue from controlled substances and that many recent
The high degree of deference we accord state evidentiary decisions means that a claimant generally will not be able to question “rulings regarding the admission or exclusion of evidence ... in a federal habeas corpus proceeding.” Cooper v. Sowders,
Much the same holds true for Puertas’s argument that the trial court at a minimum should have granted his request for a cautionary instruction about the evidence. Again, we may not grant the writ simply because a jury instruction allegеdly was incorrect under state law, Estelle v. McGuire,
While the state court of appeals concluded that the trial court should have given this instruction, it concluded that the omission did not warrant a new trial because it did not result in a miscarriage of justice. In view of the jury instructions that were given, the court reasoned, the jury had no basis for relying on the dog-sniff evidence alone to convict Puertas, and this evidence merely corroborated the “very powerful evidence” of six controlled buys of illegal narcotics. See Puertas,
III.
For these reasons, we affirm.
KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
Dissenting Opinion
This case addresses the prosecution’s outrageous failure to turn over to the defendant, Joseph Puertas, a report, completed weeks before trial, detailing an official investigation made by the State Police of allegations of local police misconduct in their investigation of Puertas. The prose
The majority agrees with the conclusion of the Michigan Court of Appeals that Puertas “failed to demonstrate that [he] exercised reasonable diligence to obtain the Michigan State Police public corruption investigative report,” in particular because there was media coverage about the investigation of Oakland County Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Everingham’s allegations of police misconduct.
The conclusion on this point by both the majority and the Michigan Court of Appeals erroneously conflates several separate elements relating to Everingham’s accusations of misconduct — the accusations themselves, a general investigation into the accusations, the official investigation done by the Michigan State Police, information that happened to be in the Report, and the fact that the Report existed and that particular information was contained in the Report — each of which has independent significance. Comments by Puertas’s trial attorney reported in The Oakland Free Press indicate that Puertas knew about some of the allegations of police misconduct related to the investigation of Puertas. However, even if it could be shown that Puertas knew of the allegations and of some investigation into the allegations, it does not follow that he knew about the official investigation conducted by the Michigan State Police and that a Report containing the results was produced.
The majority agrees with the conclusion of the Michigan Court of Appeals that Puertas had sufficient knowledge to have accessed the Report through “reasonable diligence” because local media articles reported on Everingham’s allegations and the resulting police investigation. Maj. Op. at---; Puertas,
In this case, although the investigation and Report were completed on September 23, 1999, the Report itself came to light only after Puertas’s conviction, when, pursuant to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, a newspaper obtained copies of the Report and made them available to the defense. This belies the contention of the Michigan Court of Appeals that the Report would have been available to Puertas were it pursued with “reasonable diligence.” Puertas,
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a defendant can reasonably rely on the prosecution’s representation that it has disclosed all Brady evidence, and that once the prosecution confirms this representation, the defendant is under no further duty to investigate additional Brady materials. See Banks,
Given that knowledge of the Report does not flow from knowledge of the allegations and the investigation, that Puertas did not neglect to act with “reasonable diligence” in failing to discover the Report, and that the fact of the Report itself, apart from its contents, has independent significance in terms of prejudice, the majority’s explanations regarding what Puertas either knew or should have known about the contents of the Report are insufficient to refute the materiality of the Report. We review the conclusion of the Michigan Court of Appeals that the Report was not material, a mixed question of law and fact, to assess whether it was an “unreasonable application” of the Supreme Court’s governing standard on materiality — whether “there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different,” Kyles v. Whitley,
As discussed earlier, although Puertas may have raised a variety of impeaching and exculpatory information at trial that was contained in the report, including the lack of credibility of the informant, Joseph Sweeney, and other problems with the investigation, Puertas did not, because he
The Michigan Court of Appeals relies heavily on the evidence in the Report that it considers unfavorable to Puertas (namely, that Everingham was an irresponsible employee with a gambling problem and that the Report ultimately found his allegations to be unfounded) to determine that Puertas was not prejudiced by the unavailability of the Report. The Michigan Court of Appeals was unreasonable in reaching this сonclusion. First, the state court should have recognized that the Oakland County Sheriffs Department (“the Sheriffs Department”) had motives to downplay the problems with its investigation of Puertas. In addition to a desire to preserve its integrity, the Sheriffs Department faced civil liability due to a lawsuit brought by Everingham and also stood to reap financial benefits from the Puertas case due to the forfeiture of the assets involved. See L.L. Brasier, Oakland Drug Case Tests Police Claims on $5 Million, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 8, 1999, at IB. Second, the fact that the Report ultimately concluded that Everingham’s allegations were unfounded is not highly relevant to the Brady prejudice analysis because the evidentiary standard used by the Michigan State Police to confirm such allegations is markedly different from the evidentiary standard required to convict Puertas. Although there may not have been sufficient evidence for the State Police to conclude that misconduct occurred, the Report could, and in fact, does, raise enough suspicions regarding the investigation of Puertas to create a reasonable doubt as to his guilt. For these reasons, the suppressed evidence “put[s] the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.” See Kyles,
The majority affirmed the district court’s denial of Puertas’s Brady claim on the third element and therefore found no need to discuss the other two elements.
The Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that Puertas failed to satisfy the second element, which requires that the evidence has been suppressed by the state, Strickler,
The Supreme Court has held that “the individual prosecutor has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the othеrs acting on the government’s behalf in the case, including the police.” Kyles,
The decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals that “the investigation by the State Police was not taking place on behalf of the Oakland County Prosecutor[,]” and “may fairly be characterized as being adverse to the Oakland County Sheriffs Department,” Puertas,
For the foregoing reasons, the denial by the Michigan Court of Appeals of Puertas’s Brady claim constituted an “unreasonable application of[ ] clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Therefore, I would grant Puertas’s habeas petition on this basis. I respectfully dissent.
Notes
. A successful Brady claim must satisfy the following three elements: "[t]he evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching; that evidence must have been suppressed by the State, either willfully or inadvertently; and prejudice must have ensued.” Strickler v. Greene,
. Although the majority classifies this aspect of the Brady analysis — whether a defendant could have independently accessed the information contained in the Brady material — as part of the third element’s prejudice inquiry, it is better viewed as part of the inquiry under Brady’s second element — whether the prosecution suppressed the evidence. The prosecution can only suppress evidence that is “wholly within [its] control,” and thus if a defendant knew enough to have taken advantage of the evidence or could have accessed the evidence from another source, it is the second element of Brady that has not been met. See Coe v. Bell,
. The article quoting Puertas’s trial attorney was published on June 18, 1999. See Stephen W. Huber, Ex-Deputy Says He Lied About Seeing Drug Sale, The Oakland Press, June 18, 1999, at A-l, A-12. That article indicates that Puertas knew about some of Everingham’s allegations. Although this article and another later-published article mention an investigation into the allegations, and thus Puertas
. The majority’s explanation of one discrepancy is particularly unsatisfying. Sweeney, the informant, testified at trial that on several occasions he was paid $50 to $160 less thаn what Sergeant Kenneth Quisenberry of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department told the Michigan State Police that Sweeney was paid for each drug transaction. The majority states that this "at most reflects] a confluence of Sweeney’s admittedly poor memory and Quisenberry’s poor record-keeping." Maj. Op. at-. However, Puertas should have had this information available to him both for impeachment purposes and to suggest that Quisenberiy's motives were tainted by financial interest.
. As explained in note two above, the majority’s rejection of the claim on the ground that
. Puertas contends that the Michigan Court of Appeals erroneously decided that impeaching evidence is not favorable evidence under Brady. The district court correctly concluded that the Michigan Court Appeals recognized both the proper significance of impeaching evidence under Brady’s first element and that Puertas had satisfied this element of Brady based on the Report’s impeachment value. Puertas v. Overton,