Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: defendant in a murder trial

The defendant in a criminal case has the right not to be called as a witness, as well as the right not to testify.

The police/prosecution is supposed to turn all relevant information, such as the names and addresses of all witnesses, over to the defense as part of the "discovery" process. If indeed the police were to find a homicide victim's body by consulting a "psychic," the defense would be free to cross-examine the "psychic" and to try to convince the jury that the "psychic" received information on the victim's location by other means.

Re: defendant in a murder trial

1. The prosecution may not call the defendant as a witness during its case-in-chief. However, if the defendant testifies later he can be cross-examined and, under some narrow circumstances, he could be recalled to the stand by the prosecution during its rebuttal. Under either of these scenarios, the scope of the prosecution's questions would be limited.

2. In a murder case the pertinent question is whether the defendant committed the murder and not how the police found the body, unless they found it as a result of some violation of the defendant's rights (and keep in mind that some murderers are tried and convicted even though the body has not been found at all). Therefore the prosecutor does not have to offer any evidence about how the body was found.

Mr. Stone is correct that the prosecution would have to reveal this information to the defense and that the defense would be free to subpoena the psychic at trial to see whether he got the information in a way that suggests a different culprit, but that is pretty much all the psychic could be asked about. Attempts to discredit his claimed psychic abilities would be irrelevant to any other argument, though, because even if the jury doubt's the man's psychic powers the fact remains that there has been a murder and the only question for the jury to decide is whether the defendant committed it.

If the prosecution's theory of *how* the defendant committed the murder came from the psychic then the defense would be able to question the psychic broadly, but it is extremely unlikely that the prosecution would ever try to build a case on psychic impressions instead of credible evidence. If a prosecutor ever did try to mount such a case, the defendant would surely be able to have such testimony excluded via a pre-trial motion anyway,so the jury would never hear it.