Court Opinion

ID: 9654789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:51:02.949044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:13.538163
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Presiding Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the portion of the opinion reversing the judgment and remanding the cause for a new trial because of the error in the instruction.
However, I see no good reason not to sustain the motion of defendant asking for the names of all persons other than those endorsed by the state as witnesses whom the prosecuting attorney had been informed were in the bar on the occasion *254in question, assuming the matter is not moot by reason, if so, of defendant’s counsel having the desired information already as result of the evidence presented by the state in the first trial. If the motion is sustained, the names sought could easily be produced under supervision of the trial court without necessitating the unlimited access to the files of the prosecutor and the police so feared by the main opinion.
Witnesses do not belong to the state even though they have been interviewed by the state or listed by the police in their investigation. Once defense counsel has the names of the people who were in the bar he would have to do his own work to find out by talking to them what they knew about the case, but I see no reason why he should not be given the names, and certainly providing him with these witnesses does not mean we would be requiring the prosecution to prepare his defense. The objection that providing names of witnesses means one side is being asked to prepare the other side’s defense or case is reminiscent of the apprehensions which were voiced twenty years or so ago against enlarging discovery in civil litigation, which experience has proved groundless.