Almost all criminal cases are resolved by guilty pleas. There is no expectation of finality in these dispositions when they are, perhaps much later, set aside on this basis: "a misrepresentation contained in the arresting officers’s report, [caused] all the parties [to operate] under an incorrect belief as to the facts surrounding [the] offense." This seems a long way from actual innocence or necessary reliance on material perjured testimony. Loose language in opinions may not sink ships, but it should still be avoided. Palmer

This clarification from Barnaby is an improvement: "the materiality of [bad information in prosecution reports] is measured by what impact that [information] had on the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. . . whether there is a reasonable likelihood that it affected the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. Would the defendant, knowing of the falsity of the evidence, still have plead guilty or would he have insisted on going to trial?"

The difficulty remains, however, in determining what information was known to or evaluated by the defendant and "whether the value of the undisclosed information, in this case the falsity of the laboratory report, was outweighed by the benefit of accepting the plea offer." Barnaby. There is still going to be a lot of litigation and uncertainty involved.