Opinion ID: 1743314
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: First Specification of Error

Text: The defendant lived with his mother across the street from the establishment robbed. The mother testified that the defendant had left their home with his 10-year-old brother to go to the sister's house at 8:00 PM or so and had not come home until 10:30 PM or so; her testimony thus corroborated the alibi witnesses. On cross-examination, she was asked if she had told the police officers, at the time they came to arrest her son (about an hour and a half after the robbery), that her son had been at home with her between 9:00 and 10:30 PM that evening. She positively denied having made this prior statement, which of course was inconsistent with her in-court statement. Tr. 163. The basis of this specification of error is the trial court's overruling of objections to the testimony of three police officers, on rebuttal (Bill Nos. 2, 3, and 4), that the mother had told them that her son was at home from 9:00 to 10:30 PMi. e., across the street from the establishment robbed at 9:30 PM. This pre-trial statement of hers was, of course, inconsistent with her trial testimony that the defendant had been at his sister's home, some twenty blocks away, during that period. Thus, the prior inconsistent statements were admissible for the purpose of impeaching the mother's trial testimony. La.R.S. 15:493. We are unable to find merit in the contention that a proper foundation was not laid in accordance with that article: Before evidence as to these prior inconsistent statements was introduced, the defendant's mother was asked whether (and denied that) she had made them to the arresting officers, with time, place, and circumstance sufficiently identified.