Opinion ID: 2338759
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Bishop's potential cross-examination.

Text: The foregoing analysis does not end our inquiry. In situations of this kind, the judge must attempt to accommodate not only the interests of the witness and of the defendant, but also the right of the prosecutor to cross-examine defense witnesses. Carter I, supra, 643 A.2d at 353. [14] If effective cross-examination of Bishop would necessarily create an unavoidable risk of self-incrimination, then Bishop's assertion of his privilege must be sustained. When the trial judge appropriately inquired into the subject matter of the government's proposed cross-examination, the prosecutor replied that she would attempt to impeach Bishop for bias. That impeachment could go to any bias that Bishop might have entertained either against the government or in favor of Littlejohn. An inquiry into the first of these categories would not necessarily have required the prosecutor to pose questions to which Bishop's answers would have incriminated Bishop. The government was prosecuting Bishop for murder. It had previously prosecuted him for a drug offense. The prosecutor could reasonably urge the jury to infer that Bishop might be unfavorably inclined vis-a-vis the institution whose representatives were attempting to incarcerate him. So far as the record shows, this examination could have been conducted without requiring Bishop to admit to any potentially incriminating facts. The question of Bishop's possible bias in favor of Littlejohn could pose more difficult problems, but they were not necessarily insurmountable. It is not readily apparent that Bishop would have incriminated himself if, in response to the prosecutor's proposed line of questioning, he acknowledged that Littlejohn was his friend, and (if true) that he had known Littlejohn for a substantial period of time. The two men were both in their early twenties and lived in the same neighborhood. [15] If the prosecutor had attempted her impeachment by inquiries along these lines, the creation of an inference of possible partiality or bias would not have required any potentially incriminating disclosures on Bishop's part. It is possible, of course, that the prosecutor would have attempted to impeach Bishop by pressing him for answers that could incriminate him. If the prosecutor had bona fide information, for example, that Littlejohn and Bishop were both members of the same drug gang, [16] she might have attempted to suggest to the jury that protection of a confederate in crime gave Bishop a compelling motive to lie. The scope and extent of cross-examination, however, are committed to the trial court's sound discretion. Roundtree v. United States, 581 A.2d 315, 323 (D.C. 1990). If the government would have a reasonable opportunity to cross-examine Bishop for bias with questions not posing a threat of self-incrimination, the trial judge had the authority, and even the duty, to restrict that cross-examination to accommodate Littlejohn's Sixth Amendment rights as well. See Carter II, supra, 684 A.2d at 336, 342 n. 7. As the foregoing discussion suggests, the question whether an accommodation of all of the competing interests can be reached cannot readily be answered in the abstract. It is for this reason that where a claim of self-incrimination is asserted by a witness rather than by the defendant, the court should require the witness to invoke the privilege one question at a time, and should excuse the witness from taking the stand only if absolutely necessary. Jackson, supra, 490 A.2d at 196. No such necessity was shown to exist in this case. Bishop was a defendant in a murder case. Indeed, the charges against him were far more serious than those against Littlejohn, and he was facing much more time. It was surely the trial judge's obligation, under these circumstances, to take all reasonable steps within his power to protect Bishop's rights. We do not agree, however, with the judge's view that a question-by-question assertion of the privilege would not have adequately protected Bishop's interests.