Opinion ID: 2063584
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Leading and suggestive questions.

Text: Defendant asserts he was denied a fair trial because of the prosecutor's continued use of leading and suggestive questions. This was one of the grounds urged in defendant's mistrial motion made when the State rested. He points to 27 instances in the transcript in which he asserts leading questions were used and objected to. The State identifies eight of these instances as ones in which the objection was not made until after the answer and no error was preserved. See our discussion in division IV above. In five more instances trial court failed to rule on defendant's objection and defendant made no request for rulings. See State v. Pelelo, 247 N.W.2d 221, 226 (Iowa 1976). In six other instances, defendant's objections were sustained. While unfortunately the prosecutor pursued a pattern of leading questions, the questions were not loaded. Rather, many were designed to encourage testimony from young witnesses who came across in the transcript as unenthusiastic about their role in the trial. Viewing the record as a whole, we hold defendant was not deprived of a fair trial and district court did not abuse its discretion in overruling defendant's motion on this ground.