Lopez

Defendant Monty Lopez celebrated Easter Sunday in 2003 by having a few beers with family and friends in the yard of his San Jose duplex. His loud conversation disturbed his next-door neighbor, who called the police on him, as she had before. The officer who arrived first at about 8:40 p.m. thought he would be able to defuse the situation by talking to both people. Defendant reacted aggressively to the officer’s presence, swearing, telling him to leave, and challenging him to fight. A friend restrained defendant. Other officers were called. Despite defendant’s verbal and physical resistance, the officers were eventually able to handcuff him and take him into custody. This led to a jury convicting defendant of one felony, resisting or attempting to deter the performance of an executive officer’s duties, and three misdemeanors, disturbing the peace, battering a peace officer, and resisting a peace officer.

Here we will determine, among other things, that defense counsel should have objected to evidence that each of the four defense witnesses had been arrested and that three of them had committed misdemeanor batteries and that defendant’s invocation of his right to counsel,…