Opinion ID: 2196771
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Cross-examination of Clarence Aull for Bias

Text: In cross-examining Aull, the government sought to discredit his testimony that Burns did not identify Clayborne by establishing that Aull had a strong motive not to be known as a snitch. As evidence bearing on this motive, the government elicited that Aull had had several friends in addition to Burns who had been murdered; that Aull himself had been shot on two separate occasions; and that Aull never identified his own assailants, impliedly because he feared the consequences of snitching. Clayborne contends that the trial court erred in allowing the government to elicit this testimony, because the government never proffered a basis for believing either that the murders of Aull's friends would prompt Aull to lie, or that Aull was lying when he said he could not identify his own assailants. Absent such a basis, Clayborne argues, the evidence was irrelevant, and the trial court abused its discretion in admitting it and thereafter in allowing the government to draw prejudicial inferences from this evidence in argument.