People v. Nazario
People v. Nazario
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Undercover agent Nelson Vega Rivera testified that on two different occasions the defendant, Margarita Nazario,
The contradiction consists in the account given by the undercover agent during the direct examination in the sense that after the defendant made the sale to him, she kept on walking and the agent did not see her talking to anyone else, whereas during the cross-examination, when confronted with a previous statement given by the undercover agent, the latter testified that after the sale the defendant remained with a number of persons who were at a certain distance from the place where the sale had taken place, but that the undercover agent had not heard the conversation between the defendant and the other persons.
We do not think that the contradiction is decisive as to the main issue of the sale (a material fact) as to constitute an exception to the rule we established in People v. Nieves, 57 P.R.R. 769, 785 (Del Toro, 1940), known as the optional rule, in which case, referring to the aforesaid § 524, we stated: “When a witness is false in one part of his testimony, he is to be distrusted in the remaining portion of the same; but this does not mean that that portion should be rejected in its entirety. The jury must act with caution knowing that they
The fact that the contradiction should arise in a case where the evidence contained in the information simply consists in the testimony of the undercover agent, has no bearing on the situation: People v. Seda, 82 P.R.R. 695, 706 (Blanco Lugo, 1961) ; People v. Jaimán, 86 P.R.R. 663, 664-65 (1962).
The judgments must be affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.