Opinion ID: 900409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Potential Impeachment of Black Bear

Text: [¶ 20.] New asserts that before trial Molstad received psychological reports indicating that Black Bear may not be able to tell the truth and had a propensity to hurt others and seek revenge against those he felt wronged him. Molstad, however, did not use this information to impeach Black Bear's credibility. This, claims New, deprived him of the effective assistance of counsel. [¶ 21.] Molstad had a legitimate reason to avoid magnifying Black Bear's penchant for perjury and revenge. It could have worked to discredit any testimony Black Bear gave, some of which was helpful to New's defense. Specifically, Molstad wanted to emphasize White Horse's participation in Mousseaux's murder. If the jury doubted Black Bear's testimony, it may have concluded Black Bear was lying about White Horse's involvement in Mousseaux's death, thus debasing one of Molstad's core defense strategies. Molstad sought to impeach Black Bear only to demonstrate that White Horse and Black Bear conspired to get a favorable verdict for White Horse during his trial. This would tend to implicate White Horse and Black Bear in Mousseaux's death and could create reasonable doubt over New's involvement. We think this was reasonable trial strategy. In hindsight, New now claims he was prejudiced by the exclusion of this evidence, but at the time, its presentation may have damaged his defense. Further, as the State argues, introduction of this evidence would have been cumulative, as Black Bear's direct examination testimony revealed his propensity to lie. New suffered no prejudice from Molstad's failure to impeach Black Bear using the psychological evidence.