California v. Zaheer
Annotate this CaseDefendant Hashmatullah Zaheer was tried twice for sexual battery by restraint. He denied any wrongdoing. The case hinged entirely on the credibility of the victim, Martha M. In the first trial, Zaheer was nearly acquitted of the two felonies with which he was charged, with the jury voting 11‒1 in his favor on both counts. In the second trial, however, he was convicted of both felonies. A key aspect of the defense attack on Martha’s credibility involved the condition of the electronic door lock system in Zaheer’s car. In both trials, Martha testified in some detail about how Zaheer locked her inside the car by pressing a button on the driver’s side door. The defense countered that with evidence that the electronic locking mechanism in Zaheer’s car had not worked in years. In the second trial, however, defense counsel simply failed to establish the necessary predicate fact that Martha was in Zaheer’s Honda on the night in question. And despite having knowledge to the contrary, the prosecutor seized on this oversight to suggest for the first time during her closing argument that Zaheer might have been driving a company car. In a case that hinged entirely on whether the jury believed Martha, and with a jury in the first trial that largely did not, the Court of Appeal felt compelled to conclude that defense counsel’s error, compounded by the prosecutor’s comment, was prejudicial. Judgment was therefore reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.
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