Court Opinion

ID: 9725060
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:27:26.946029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:09.531437
License: Public Domain

*991KINGSLEY, Acting P. J.
I concur in the result. However, I do not agree with two matters discussed in the majority opinion.
(1) The evidence offered in the attempt to impeach Willis, was the record of a conviction of a person named “Samuel Willet,” apparently for theft. Apart from the fact that “Willet” appeared to have been bom on the same day as Willis, and bore the same first name, nothing in the record shows that they were the same person. On the record before us, exclusion of the record relating to “Willet” was not error.
Since the proffered evidence was properly excluded, I see no reason to discuss the hypothetical right to have used an 18-year-old conviction as impeachment of a nondefendant witness.
(2) The People’s case rested on the transcribed testimony of Reid and Willis: Under those circumstances, it is pointless to talk about emphasizing their testimony—that was all the testimony the jury had to consider. It is one thing to hear a witness; it is another thing to hear another party read that testimony, with the reader’s possible misreading and with the reader’s own emphasis of what is read. I cannot see that, in this case, the action of the trial court in allowing the juiy to follow the reading from a transcript had any prejudicial effect; rather, it let the jury put its own emphasis on what Reid and Willis had said at the preliminaiy hearing.
A petition for a rehearing was denied May 10, 1978. Kingsley, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied June 15, 1978.