Does a limitation on cross-examining a prosecution witness at trial violate a defendant's right to confront the witness?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Howard, C077703 (Cal. App. 2017):

Defendant nevertheless asserts that the exclusion violated his constitutional right to confront witnesses at trial because he was not able to adequately challenge the credibility of the prosecution's strongest witness. But he did confront and cross-examine the associate; he was simply barred from eliciting irrelevant, distracting or unduly time-consuming evidence from that witness. The routine application of state evidence law does not implicate federal confrontation rights absent proof that the jury would have had a significantly different impression about the credibility of a witness whose cross-examination was limited. (People v. Pearson (2013) 56 Cal.4th 393, 455-456.) We are not persuaded that the jury's impression of the associate's credibility would have been significantly different absent the court-imposed limitation.

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