United States v. Lindstrom

Dennis Slater and Joanne Lindstrom (defendants) were charged with insurance fraud in connection with their therapy company, and a former employee testified as the prosecution's key witness that she had helped alter patient records and had been ordered to falsify billing at Slater's and Lindstrom's direction. On cross-examination, the defendants sought to show the witness harbored a vendetta against them by asking about specific violent, manipulative episodes tied to her documented psychiatric illness — including offering money to have someone shot, firing a gun into a home, and an involuntary commitment and manipulative suicide attempt — but the trial court excluded most of this questioning, and the defendants were convicted.