Opinion ID: 1133414
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial court's refusal to allow attorney Bernstein to testify

Text: When the trial court allowed Morgan to testify about the $20 bill, it also ruled that defense attorney Bernstein could not refute the evidence through his own testimony. The judge explained: I [will] not allow any attorney to argue his or her own credibility. After Morgan's testimony on cross-examination about the $20 bill, defense attorney Dell sought to call Bernstein as a witness, arguing this was the only way to refute Morgan's testimony in question. The trial court disagreed, noting that the defense could refute Morgan's claim by calling as a witness the on-duty watch commander who was present when Bernstein came to see Morgan in the visitor room and presumably would have noticed Bernstein's placement of money, if any, on the table. The trial court reaffirmed its earlier ruling that defense attorney Bernstein could not testify. This ruling, defendant claims, precluded him from presenting evidence that would refute damaging testimony by Morgan. Preliminarily, we note that the trial court was wrong in its assumption that attorneys, categorically, cannot testify in any criminal case in which they act as counsel. As we said in People v. Marquez (1992) 1 Cal.4th 553, 574, 3 Cal.Rptr.2d 710, 822 P.2d 418, a trial court may not deny the defendant the right to present impeaching evidence through the testimony of his counsel, notwithstanding the provisions relating to testimony by counsel in the Rules of Professional Conduct. Assuming for the sake of argument that the trial court should have permitted defense attorney Bernstein to testify in this case to refute Morgan's story about the $20 bill, the error was harmless. As already explained, Morgan's testimony was refuted by other evidence.