Opinion ID: 2625875
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Cross-examination of Gladys Koll

Text: Defendant claims he was denied his rights of confrontation and effective assistance of counsel, his right to a reliable death verdict, and his right to present a defense by the court's ruling sustaining a relevance objection to defense counsel's question of the victim's wife, Gladys Koll, regarding the contents of the pharmacy safe. Gladys Koll testified that after her husband's death she checked the pharmacy inventory and records and found that no controlled narcotics, which were kept in the safe, were missing, and that the safe hadn't been disturbed. On cross-examination, defense counsel asked Mrs. Koll, What kinds of narcotic items were kept in the safe? The court sustained the prosecutor's relevance objection because of the preliminary testimony by this witness that the safe was not disturbed. Defendant argues counsel's question directly pertained to the accuracy and completeness of the witness's knowledge about the narcotics and thus the answer would have affected her credibility about whether, indeed, the safe had been `disturbed' in that respect. But Mrs. Koll had testified that she compared the contents of the safe with written inventory records, not with her own memory of the narcotics kept therein. Moreover, the trial here took place almost eight years after Koll was killed. Mrs. Koll's ability or inability, at that late date, to remember what particular drugs had been kept in the safe would not have had a tendency in reason to prove or disprove the accuracy of her inventory check. The relevance objection was therefore properly sustained (Evid.Code, § 210), and none of defendant's asserted rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, or Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution were infringed.