Does the Attorney General have any grounds to impeach a defendant for misconduct by asking him a question about assault with a firearm?
California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Britton, A139191 (Cal. App. 2015):
The Attorney General acknowledges: " '[t]he deliberate asking of questions calling for inadmissible and prejudicial answers is misconduct' " (People v. Bell (1989) 49 Cal.3d 502, 532), but argues the prosecutor's question asked merely what defendant was "convicted of" and therefore did not violate the court's pretrial ruling. "Also, neither the question nor the answer revealed any facts about appellant's particular prior crime." We cannot agree.
The court's pretrial ruling was that the defendant could be impeached with what he was "convicted of" - assault with a firearm. A conviction for assault with a firearm may, but does not necessarily, involve a shooting. (People v. Valdez (1985) 175 Cal.App.3d 103, 108; cf. People v. Sylva (1904) 143 Cal. 62, 64-66 [pointing an unloaded gun at another is not an assault].) Particularly when combined with the other information brought out by the prosecutorthat defendant first fired a gun at age 19, and that the 1994 incident involved a revolverthere is a reasonable likelihood the jury
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understood the prosecutor's question to suggest that defendant had been convicted of "shooting somebody."
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