Friday, April 3, 2026
Page 3
Court of Appeal:
Prosecutor’s Failure to Contradict Perjury Properly Raised
Opinion Says Challenge to Constitutional Violation Isn’t Forfeited by Not Raising It at Trial Court or in on Appeal
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A defendant’s right under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1959 decision in Napue v. Illinois for a correction by the prosecution of testimony it knows to be false is not forfeited by virtue of a failure to raise it at trial or on appeal, Div. One of the Court of Appeal for this district declared yesterday in granting a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
The first trial of appellant Alonzo Devon Melson on charges stemming from a 2017 gang-related shooting ended in a mistrial; at the second trial, with beefed-up testimony by two witnesses, he was convicted of murder and two attempted murders.
Justice Gregory J. Weingart said the prosecutor “knew or should have known” that statements by the witnesses that had not been made by them at the first trial “were false,” yet “he did not correct them.”
The duty to correct the statements when made at trial was established by Napue, he noted, saying that the defense lawyer’s failure to assert the falsity of the testimony is irrelevant to the breach of that obligation. Weingart continued:
“We… disagree with the People’s contention that Melson should have brought his Napue claim in his appeal. Raising a Napue claim in an appeal is often impractical because the ordinary appellate record may not include all information necessary to adjudicate Napue error…. The question of what a prosecutor knew or should have known often cannot be answered without an evidentiary hearing like the one in this case.”
He noted:
“Indeed, Melson first filed his habeas petition simultaneously with his direct appeal. He appears to have addressed Napue error in the habeas petition rather than the direct appeal specifically to facilitate the use of evidence from outside the appellate record.”
The false testimony was material, Weingart said, requiring reversal of the convictions.
He noted that at the first trial, only nine jurors voted for a conviction.
He said without the false testimony at the second trial, the evidence “was basically the same as it was the first time around when three jurors voted to acquit.” He reasoned that “[t]he the People have not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that” the “false testimony did not contribute to the guilty verdicts.”
One of the convictions for attempted murder was reversed on appeal. Weingart, then a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sitting on assignment, also authored that opinion.
Yesterday’s opinion comes in In re Melson, 2026 S.O.S. 926.
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