Opinion ID: 2405451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Barber's Cross-Examination.

Text: Brown's attorney questioned Barber extensively about his alleged motive to curry favor with the government. Barber had been accused of defrauding his former employer of at least five thousand dollars. On cross-examination, Barber admitted that, while he was employed as a salesman, he allowed several individuals to buy merchandise by using credit cards which he knew [were not] really their credit card[s]. In exchange, Barber received cash, sportswear, and other merchandise. According to Barber, one of his supervisors got [him] into doing it, but Barber acknowledged that he continued his fraudulent activities after the supervisor left the company. The scheme was perpetrated on a daily basis from late January 1994 until early May 1994, when Barber was confronted by a store investigator and his employment was terminated. The allegations against Barber were still being investigated at the time of trial. When the prosecutor asked Barber whether he hoped or expected to benefit from his cooperation in the ongoing investigation, Barber stated: The only thing that I'm hoping for is the fact that I don't have a record. I've never been locked up or never been prosecuted for anything, so that . . . the only thing that I'm hoping that I can have on my side is the fact that I do have a clean record. This is a one-time thing. The defense attempted to discredit Barber by suggesting on cross-examination that he had cooperated in the fraud investigation and in the present case in order to avoid prosecution, but Barber insisted that this was not so: No, I want to repay the debt that I owed [the company] and deal with what I done. That's what I want to do. There's no way  there's no way back. I already made a choice.       I would love to [avoid prosecution], but the way things are going, I'm going to have to stand accountable for my actions. Barber was also cross-examined about various inconsistencies in his statements to police. The defense brought out, for example, that Barber had told the police, immediately after the robbery, that the man who shot him was light-skinned. In fact, Brown's skin is a darker shade of brown. In addition, defense counsel attempted to show, through cross-examination, that portions of Barber's account of the robbery were incredible in a number of respects. Counsel questioned, for example, the plausibility of Barber's claim that he had convinced his apparently credulous assailants that he did not know his own ATM code, and that the first ATM machine would not accept his card. Brown's attorney also sought to cast doubt as to the truth of Barber's account of his own resourcefulness and bravery in confronting and foiling three robbers, one of whom had kept a sawed-off shotgun stuck in Barber's ribs.