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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.
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