Opinion ID: 462493
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Confrontation of Pistone with Medical Records

Text: 176 At trial Pistone testified that Balistrieri offered to let him take over the bookmaking operation in Milwaukee but that he declined, giving as his reason that he did not want to spend the whole winter in Milwaukee. When asked what the true reason was, he testified that his wife had been in a serious automobile accident and that he could not have been away from home for the entire football season. 177 DiSalvo finds a discrepancy between Pistone's trial testimony and his testimony to the grand jury, produced to the defendants under the Jencks Act. According to DiSalvo, Pistone told the grand jury that he declined the offer because the weather in Milwaukee was too cold. The defense unsuccessfully sought access to the hospital and medical records of Pistone's wife, in order to test the truthfulness of Pistone's claim at trial that his wife was seriously injured. The theory was that if Pistone's explanation based on his wife's injury should prove false, this would cast doubt on his testimony that the offer was ever made. 178 According to the only evidence we find in the record, and the very source cited by DiSalvo for his paraphrase of Pistone's testimony, Pistone testified that he told the grand jury that he didn't want to spend the winter in Milwaukee. Transcript at 1113. That explanation is perfectly compatible with the explanation he gave at trial. In his trial testimony he simply went a step further and gave the reason why he did not want to spend the winter in Milwaukee: his wife had been seriously injured and needed his assistance. There is nothing on which to base even a reasonable suspicion that Pistone may have been lying in testifying that his wife had been seriously injured. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the request for medical records.