Safety-valve Disclosures Should be Before Sentencing Hearing

U.S. v. Galvon-Manzo, 2011 WL 2315194 (6/14/11) (Utah) (Published) - An important and unhelpful safety-valve decision. Generally speaking, any and all disclosures for safety-valve purposes are timely only if they occur prior to the sentencing hearing. The disclosure is supposed to demonstrate the defendant is fully cooperating and to benefit the government pre-hearing so that it can investigate the defendant's truthfulness.

The district court can exercise its discretion and allow the defendant to make disclosures during the hearing, but, in this case, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it refused to allow the defendant to essentially debrief during the hearing on the grounds that the defendant lied too much in his post-arrest statement and one debriefing. It was okay for the district court to decide no further information from the defendant would be useful or informative because it would be unreliable.

With respect to the co-defendant, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it refused to hold an evidentiary hearing to allow the defendant to show his pre-sentencing disclosures were truthful and complete. The district court could assess the credibility of the defendant's information without hearing testimony.