And to be compelling, the testimony has to be essential to the case and unable to be sourced somewhere else.
Boulder prosecutors contended that the information from the roommate’s partial recantation could be obtained elsewhere, and that the stipulation offered to Honstein solved the problem.
Honstein, meanwhile, argued that the trial court rightly decided the prosecutor was the only witness to the recantation, and that he had no obligation to accept the stipulation instead of the prosecutor’s live testimony.
While justices agreed there was no case law to support forcing Honstein to accept the stipulation, he didn’t have a compelling and legitimate reason to force the prosecutor to testify, because “the existence of a comparable alternative source is enough to render the prosecutor’s testimony needless,” Justice Boatright wrote.
Honstein could get the same information from the investigator who heard the roommate partially recant three days after the prosecutor, justices found, noting that the only differences were the roommate’s offer in the first conversation to shave her head to reveal the mark from the soda can, and her explanation in the second conversation about mistaking the impact from the can for being punched.
