Opinion ID: 2581358
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Prosecutor's Leading Questions

Text: Defendant accuses the prosecutor of asking many leading questions and introducing into evidence tape recordings of witness interviews conducted by the police that likewise contained leading questions. In defendant's view, the cumulative impact of those questions denied him a fair trial. Defendant does not specify which questions were problematic, but instead cites to 18 pages in the trial transcript. The instances of prosecutorial leading questions cited by defendant fall into two categories: (1) questions directed to law enforcement witnesses who were generally being asked to summarize their earlier testimony or to identify certain locations on a diagram, and (2) questions directed to eyewitnesses who were either reluctant to testify or whose earlier testimony seemed unclear. In only two instances did the defense object at all, and only once did it object to a question as leading; the trial court overruled defendant's single leading question objection. Except as to the two questions to which defendant objected, he has forfeited any claim of evidentiary error. We are not persuaded that these relatively few leading questions, asked during a two and a half month trial involving three murders and many witnesses, either individually or collectively denied defendant a fair trial, even assuming defendant had preserved the issue for review by having made timely objection to the form of all of the questions of which he now complains. ( People v. Dennis (1998) 17 Cal.4th 468, 530, 71 Cal. Rptr.2d 680, 950 P.2d 1035.) Defendant further complains about leading questions that were posed, not by the prosecutor, but by law enforcement officers to witnesses in the course of pretrial police questioning that was recorded and played at trial. Defendant cites no authority prohibiting the police from asking leading questions of witnesses to a crime.