Title: State v. Cardinal

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P.
40 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
Court, 111 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 of any errors in order
that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                No. 88-358


State of Vermont                             Supreme Court

     v.                                      On Appeal from
                                             District Court of Vermont,
Anthony D. Cardinal                          Unit 2, Chittenden Circuit

                                             September Term, 1990


Edward J. Cashman, J.

Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Attorney General, and Susan R. Harritt, Assistant
   Attorney General, Montpelier, for plaintiff-appellee

Martin & Paolini, P.C., Barre, for defendant-appellant


PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Peck, Gibson, Dooley and Morse, JJ.



     MORSE, J.    Defendant was convicted, after a jury trial, of sexually
assaulting his seventeen-year-old daughter.  13 V.S.A. { 3252(a)(1)(C).
Defendant appeals the trial court's denial of his pretrial motions in
limine, a motion for judgment of acquittal, and a motion to strike
testimony.  We affirm.
     The issues before the Court are:  (1) whether there was sufficient
evidence to support a finding that the victim was placed in imminent fear of
bodily harm; (2) whether evidence of defendant's uncharged bad behavior --
prior sexual abuse of the victim, violent and threatening behavior toward
the victim and her fiancé, and conspiring to kill them -- was admissible
under V.R.E. 404(b) and 403; and (3) whether a prosecution witness's
hearsay testimony regarding the victim's purported motive in prosecuting the
defendant, protection of her younger sister, was sufficiently prejudicial to
warrant reversal.
     Defendant was alleged to have had sexual intercourse with the victim at
about noon at a motel on August 22, 1986.  According to the victim,
defendant called her from a jobsite where he was a construction supervisor
and instructed her to leave her workplace and meet him at the motel.  She
arrived at the motel, rented a room, and shortly thereafter was joined by
defendant.  The victim, after resisting defendant's attempt to undress her,
pulled away and undressed herself.  Defendant had sexual relations with her
twice over a two-hour period and left.  When asked why she had left work to
meet defendant at the motel, the victim stated that she was scared and that
numerous death threats made by defendant over the years left her too
frightened to disobey him.
                                    I.
                           Fear of Imminent Harm
     At trial, the evidence showed that defendant had maintained an
incestuous relationship with his daughter for a period of four years,
beginning when the victim was thirteen years old and continuing until the
incident at the motel.  Initially, the sexual assaults took place in the
home, but when the victim was older, defendant began to arrange assignations
at motels.  According to the victim, the assaults took place approximately
once a week.
     On numerous occasions, defendant told the victim that failure to
consent to his advances would be severely punished.  He threatened to kill
her on several occasions, even showing her the gun he would use should she
fail to satisfy his demands or report his actions.  After the initial
assault in 1981, the victim reported the incident to her school principal
who contacted a social worker.  After the social worker contacted the
victim's parents to arrange an interview, defendant reiterated his intent to
kill her unless she recanted her story; she recanted.
     Under 13 V.S.A. { 3252(a)(1)(C)(amended 1989), sexual assault occurs
when a person compels another person to engage in a sexual act "[b]y placing
the other person in fear that any person will be harmed imminently."
Defendant argues that the fear-producing threats must be proximate to the
incident.  Nothing in 13 V.S.A. { 3252(a)(1)(C) requires that the threats be
made in a particular way or bear a particular temporal relation to the
sexual act.  The statute requires only that the victim fear imminent harm;
it is silent as to how and when that fear must be instilled.  Here, the
victim had been conditioned by repeated threats of harm to submit to
defendant over a four-year period.  See In re Nash, 149 Vt. 63, 65,