Judge Blocks Testimony on Broderick’s Jail Scuffle

The judge in the second murder trial of Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick decided Monday to bar testimony about a jailhouse incident in which she scuffled with San Diego County sheriff’s deputies.

The incident occurred Sept. 1, when deputies removed Broderick, kicking and screaming, from her cell at the Las Colinas Jail in Santee, where she has been held without bail since Nov. 5, 1989.

Prosecutors have said they were considering having information about the incident entered into evidence, as well as other testimony regarding her conduct in jail. Officials claim that Broderick injured three deputies in the scuffle, then smeared feces around her cell.

County prosecutors said the fight began when deputies ordered Broderick, 44, into isolation as punishment for an earlier incident. Her attorney, Jack Earley, contends that a jail guard antagonized Broderick, sparking the scuffle.

Broderick has since been sued in a civil action by Sheriff’s Deputy Michele St. Clair, whose attorney, James J. Cunningham, later released an edited videotape of the scuffle to local media. According to the suit, St. Clair is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

In other matters taken up at a hearing Monday, Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan decided to allow the testimony of Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist, whom the prosecution intends to call as an expert witness in rebuttal to a psychologist called by the defense.

After objections from Earley, the judge said he would not allow Dietz to testify about “whether or not Mrs. Broderick is a truthful person.”

“That isn’t his function,” Whelan said in a hearing outside the presence of jurors but open to the press and public. “That’s the jury’s function.”

The judge also agreed to permit the testimony of Manny Lopez, whom the defense intends to call as a ballistics expert hired to rebut the testimony of similar witnesses called by the prosecution.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells voiced her objections to Lopez’s testimony, saying that, as a former police officer who supervised the Border Area Robbery Force, Lopez would clearly have had experience with ballistics but that, in this case, such expertise would be irrelevant.

Lopez left the San Diego Police Department in 1979 after supervising the department’s much-publicized border unit, known as BARF. He was a leading character in Joseph Wambaugh’s book about the undercover border crime unit, “Lines and Shadows.”

Broderick is accused of murdering her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, 44, and his second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28, in the bedroom of their Marston Hills home on the morning of Nov. 5, 1989.