Opinion ID: 198913
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Tire Tracks

Text: 44 According to Hughes, it was a raw abuse of power for the government to tell the jury that the tire tracks are not part of the case. Once again, Hughes's complaint misses the mark. Although a crime scene investigator for the Mexican government testified that he had noted tire tracks by the roadside, the significance of this evidence was fairly debatable. Hughes presented a witness who testified that the factory tires on the Ford Tempo he rented were slightly wider than the tracks measured at the crime scene. Hughes argued that the rental car probably had factory tires because it was new, and the discrepancy in the measurements proved that Hughes's rental car did not make the tracks found at the crime scene. Upon cross-examination, however, Hughes's witness admitted that he had never measured the imprint that such a tire would make in sand, the surface at the crime scene, and that he did not know what make of tire was actually on the car that Hughes drove. Accordingly, the government was entitled to argue that the tire track evidence was insignificant, although, as always, the jury was free to adopt a different interpretation of the evidence.