Opinion ID: 2062499
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Lawyer as Witness

Text: Defense attorney Charles Criss notified the court in February 1984 that his trial testimony could be necessary to impeach Logan at Carter's trial. Criss told the court that his testimony would concern a statement made by Logan while Criss was interviewing him in jail. According to Criss, Logan said that he gave a statement to police because his recently evicted girlfriend and children were waiting outside the interrogation room. Logan's statement to Criss, which Logan denied during a subsequent deposition, was not recorded. The State suggested that Logan may have been referring to any one of the many statements which he had given police in various cases and thus Criss' testimony was unimportant. The trial court ruled that Criss was not required to withdraw because his proposed testimony was not material. The trial court did inform the parties that it would not prohibit the defense from questioning Logan about the prior inconsistent statement. The court at that time did not specifically address Criss availability as a defense witness. The defense never listed Criss as a witness. Aside from the comments made during the earlier hearing, the defense gave the State no indication before trial that it would call Criss. When Logan testified at trial, the defense employed a lengthy and effective cross-examination detailing Logan's many criminal acts and his many statements to police. During this barrage, Logan specifically denied that his family was in the police station at the time that he gave the statement implicating Carter. The defense called Criss as a witness during its case-in-chief. The State objected, arguing that it had no notice that Criss would testify. The trial court asked Criss whether his name ever appeared on the witness list provided to the State and whether anyone else was present when Logan's allegedly inconsistent statement was given. Criss answered both questions in the negative. The court then ruled that Criss could not testify. Carter characterizes this ruling as an abuse of the trial court's discretion to fashion a remedy for the defense's failure to comply with discovery requirements. Because the witness at issue is the attorney representing the defendant, the issue more specifically is whether the trial court abused its discretion when it refused to allow counsel to testify. Worthington v. State (1980), 273 Ind. 499, 405 N.E.2d 913, cert. denied, 451 U.S. 915, 101 S.Ct. 1991, 68 L.Ed.2d 306. Although a lawyer representing one of the parties is not rendered an incompetent witness, the dual role of lawyer-witness should be avoided. Id. The ethical rules in force at the time of trial provided: Occasionally a lawyer is called upon to decide in a particular case whether he will be a witness or advocate. If a lawyer is both counsel and witness, he becomes more easily impeachable for interest and thus may be a less effective witness. Conversely, the opposing counsel may be handicapped in challenging the credibility of the lawyer when the lawyer also appears as an advocate in the case. An advocate who becomes a witness is in the unseemly and ineffective position of arguing his own credibility. The roles of an advocate and of a witness are inconsistent; the function of an advocate is to advance or argue the cause of another, while that of a witness is to state facts objectively. Code of Professional Responsibility, EC 5-9 (1986). Logan had already been extensively impeached before Criss was offered as a witness. While Criss' testimony would have borne on Logan's bias, that evidence was not so probative as to require its presentation, in light of the policies weighing against defense counsel testifying as a witness. Moreover, the defense had the court's permission to cross-examine Logan extensively about his prior statement to Criss. Instead, the defense chose merely to elicit Logan's denial of his family's presence at the police station and then follow up with Criss' testimony about Logan's prior inconsistent statement. Before a witness can testify about an extra-judicial statement made by another person, the statement has to be offered to the declarant while he is testifying. Carter v. State, (1980), Ind. App., 412 N.E.2d 825. The defense never confronted Logan directly with his out-of-court assertion. Therefore, Criss' testimony about the statement, without more, would have been improper. As the defense never laid a proper foundation for impeachment by a prior inconsistent statement, Criss, attorney or not, could not have testified about it In this sense, the defense's inability to enter this prior inconsistent statement into evidence was a result of failed trial strategy, rather than any erroneous ruling by the court.