Opinion ID: 1237936
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 23

Heading: Impeachment of Defense Witness Stinson

Text: (60) Defendant contends that the trial court erred in overruling defense objections to questions the prosecutor asked of defense witness John Stinson regarding acts of misconduct Stinson had committed in prison. Defendant contends that the prosecutor violated the rule that a party may not cross-examine a witness on irrelevant matters for the purpose of eliciting something to be contradicted. ( People v. Lavergne (1971) 4 Cal.3d 735, 744 [94 Cal. Rptr. 405, 484 P.2d 77].) The rule does not apply here, however, because the prosecutor's questions related directly to relevant matters raised on direct examination. On direct examination, Stinson testified that he was an inmate of San Quentin Prison and had previously been convicted of murder, robbery, and burglary. In his opinion, the AB did not and never had existed as an organization; it was just ... a tag that the administration puts on people that it wishes to segregate from the general [prison] population.... He said this had happened to him several times. He was placed in the general prison population in 1984 after an administrative determination that there was insufficient evidence he was an AB member, but at the time of his testimony prison officials considered him to be an AB member. On cross-examination, Stinson testified he was then segregated from the general prison population in a security housing unit. He said the reason for this segregation was that prison officials still linked him to the AB. Over defense objections on relevance grounds, the prosecutor then asked whether Stinson had swung at or hit a deputy sheriff in September 1980, whether he had been present with other reputed AB members when inmates were stabbed in separate incidents in November 1980 and February 1981, whether a six-inch knife blade had been found in his shoe in July 1981, and whether any of these incidents was responsible for his segregated prison housing. [18] The trial court properly overruled the defense objections. The questions were proper cross-examination in view of Stinson's testimony on direct examination that prison officials had used his alleged AB membership several times to justify the restrictions they imposed on him, including segregation from the general prison population. The challenge to this testimony also undermined Stinson's broader claim that the AB did not exist as an organization but was merely a label invented by prison authorities to justify restrictions imposed on certain prisoners.