Opinion ID: 2365208
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Calling a defense witness who was impeached by the State

Text: [¶ 22] Carter's final claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel is based on the fact that his trial counsel called a witness, E.W., in his defense who was subsequently impeached by the State. Specifically, Carter claims that because E.W. testified inconsistently with what he told police the night of the murder that his trial counsel was ineffective for calling E.W. as a witness because E.W. was so easily impeached and therefore was not credible to the jury. At trial, E.W. testified on direct examination that he had not been drinking the night of the murder because he was on probation. He further testified that he witnessed Moody get up from a chair and push Carter to the ground and then follow Carter as he tried to walk away. At that point, E.W.'s testimony appeared to favor Carter in that it helped prove that Moody was the aggressor. However, on cross-examination, when asked about being questioned by the police regarding his whereabouts and whether he told the police that he was at a bar earlier in the evening, E.W. denied having spoken with the police at all that night. The State then called, as a rebuttal witness, the police officer who spoke with E.W. the night of the murder. The officer testified that E.W. told him that night that he and a couple of friends had just returned from the bar and did not see anything that occurred. [¶ 23] It is clear from the record that the State was able effectively to question the reliability of E.W.'s testimony through cross-examination and use of a rebuttal witness. Carter does not point to any case, and we are aware of none, that stands for the proposition that the mere fact of impeachment of a defense witness equates to ineffective assistance of counsel. Moreover, given the number of witnesses who testified that Carter was the aggressor, it is conceivable that this was defense counsel's only chance to bolster Carter's self-defense argument by offering a witness to provide an alternative view of the events. In that light, calling E.W. as a witness could be reasonable trial strategy, and the fact that the State impeached E.W. does not overcome the presumption that counsel was effective. See Laing v. State, 746 P.2d 1247, 1249 (Wyo.1987) (quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2065, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (Judicial scrutiny of counsel's performance must be highly deferential. It is all too tempting for a defendant to second-guess counsel's assistance after conviction or adverse sentence, and it is all too easy for a court, examining counsel's defense after it has proved unsuccessful, to conclude that a particular act or omission of counsel was unreasonable.)). In any event, to find Carter's trial counsel ineffective for calling E.W. as a witness would require us to speculate as to the reasoning for calling E.W. as a defense witness and attempt to eliminate any possible reasonable trial strategy for doing so, which we will not do. [2] Accordingly, we cannot say that Carter's trial counsel was ineffective for calling E.W. as a witness.