Reference no: EM133231109

You are scheduled to testify in a criminal case in which the defendant is charged with bilking customers out of their deposits. The alleged scheme involves selling condominium time shares in Miami's South Beach area. According to the allegations, the defendant took millions of dollars for deposits in condominium time shares, but instead of constructing the condominium as planned, the defendant paid himself an exorbitant salary and did little more than hire an architect to draw up plans.

You have been hired by the state attorney to testify as to the amounts of money that the defendant paid himself over the three years in which the alleged scheme persisted. Your analysis of bank records shows that the defendant took a salary of $300,000 per year for a total of four years. During the same period he collected about $12 million in deposits.

You are very comfortable regarding the report you are writing. The bank records are very clear, and the only difficult part was tracing some of the payments to the defendant because it took some time to discover all the bank accounts involved.

The problem is that the district attorney is now pushing you to say in your report that the defendant's salary was unreasonable given his experience, and also that he had no reasonable expectation that the project could have succeeded.

You express doubts regarding your ability to include such wording in your report. The district attorney responds by asking you to do the right thing, and proceeds to show you photographs of elderly and frail persons who lost money because the defendant had told them how good of an investment they were making.

The district attorney further states that the judge in the case will most certainly not exclude your testimony for your lack of qualifications. The judge very strongly favors prosecutors, and there is a very strong political pressure to bring a conviction.

You have doubts about your qualifications to testify in the additional areas requested by the prosecutor, but you have worked for this prosecutor before and know that she is a straight shooter. You believe her when she says that the judge will permit your testimony.

Should you agree to expand your testimony? Support your response. What issues are involved?