Opinion ID: 2192843
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prior Sexual Relations Between One of Four Defendants and the Complainant

Text: Defendants assert that the trial court denied their rights of confrontation and cross-examination by excluding evidence of prior sexual relations between defendant Williams and the complainant. Such an assertion must rest on the premise that such evidence is probative of their claim that the complainant consented to have group sexual relations with all four of them, one after the other, with defendant Williams constantly present and the other defendants intermittently so. We are unable to agree with defendants' premise. There seems to be little, if any, logic to the proposition that because the complainant might have voluntarily consented to sexual intercourse with defendant Williams in the past, in what we must assume in the absence of evidence to the contrary to have been an encounter between just the two of them, she would more probably have consented in this case to intercourse with not only defendant Williams again, but also group intercourse with three other men in his company. An analogous claim was made and rejected in In the Interest of Lawrence D Nichols, 2 Kan App 2d 431; 580 P2d 1370 (1978). There a juvenile defendant was found guilty of having assisted another person in the commission of rape. Specifically, the facts were that defendant, in the company of two other young men, went to the home of the complainant. There the defendant had sexual intercourse with the complainant and then, by force, he assisted his two companions in having intercourse with the complainant. The defendant sought to admit into evidence the fact that he and the complainant had been having sexual intercourse on a regular basis for several months and that they often had rough intercourse. However, the trial court, in applying the Kansas rape shield law, which is much broader than Michigan's and which specifically makes relevance the touchstone of admissibility, excluded such evidence. In addressing the defendant's contention that the trial court's ruling had violated defendant's right to confrontation, the Kansas appellate court said: While it may be conceded that often the victim's prior conduct with the defendant would be relevant to the consent issue and therefore should be admitted under [Kan Stat Ann §] 60-447a [rape shield law], it does not appear that the trial court abused its discretion in excluding the evidence under the special circumstances of this case. It must be remembered that the defendant arrived at the victim's trailer in the company of two friends. It does not appear that the trial court acted capriciously in determining that the defendant should not have presumed that her prior consensual activity with him alone would imply her consent to having intercourse with his friends, or even to having intercourse only with him, but in the presence of his friends. We can find no abuse of discretion in the trial court's ruling excluding the proffered evidence for purposes of defending against charges of rape ([Kan Stat Ann §] 21-3502) and aiding and abetting another in the commission of a crime ([Kan Stat Ann §] 21-3205). The judgment of guilty for the violation of [Kan Stat Ann §] 21-3502 and [Kan Stat Ann §] 21-3205 is therefore affirmed. In re Nichols, supra, 436. We feel the fact of sexual intercourse between a complainant and a defendant alone should not, without more, serve as substantive evidence that the complainant would consent to any type of group sexual encounter. In short, the facts of this record present us with little or no logical relevance between the excluded prior sexual acts evidence and the issue of consent respecting either defendant Williams alone or the other three defendants collectively.
In their briefs some of the defendants also seem to be arguing to us that the excluded prior sexual act evidence should have been admitted on the issue of the complainant's credibility. It is unclear, however, whether or not the defendants mean simply that the prior sexual act evidence is relevant insofar as it tends to prove consent, thus tending to impugn the complainant's account of forced sexual intercourse. In such an event it is the complainant's veracity as to the particular instance in issue which is more properly being challenged than her overall credibility as a witness, although the distinction is admittedly fine. If this is the substance of the defendants' assertion that the prior sexual relations of defendant Williams with the complainant are relevant to complainant's credibility, we have held to the contrary in our immediately preceding discussion. On the other hand, if the defendants are asserting that the prior sexual activity of the complainant with defendant Williams is admissible to impeach the complainant's general credibility as a witness, we likewise find no merit in such an argument. While it is true that prior sexual act conduct was used in the past by some courts to attack the credibility of a complaining witness in forcible sexual assault cases, Tanford & Bocchino, Rape Victim Shield Laws and the Sixth Amendment, 128 U Pa L Rev 544, 549 (1980), the notion that unchaste women are especially prone to lying has become as antiquated and as fatuous as the belief that simply because a woman has consented to intercourse with a third party on another occasion, she probably consented to intercourse with the defendant. As the North Carolina Supreme Court has observed in discussing the subject of impeachment of credibility through sexual history evidence: Common sense dictates the unreasonableness of this attitude. If sexual experiences outside marriage render one woman less truthful than her virgin sister, then sexual experience outside marriage would be an issue at any trial where a woman was a witness. This is plainly not the case. A woman, just as a man, `may be intemperate, incontinent, profane and addicted to many other vices that ruin the reputation, and yet retain a scrupulous regard for the truth.   ' Gilchrist v McKee, 4 Watts 380, 386 (Pa, 1835), quoted in Commonwealth v Crider, 240 Pa Super 403, 406; 361 A2d 352, 354 (1976). State v Fortney, 301 NC 31, 40; 269 SE2d 110, 115 (1980). It is enough therefore to dispose of this matter that we point to MRE 608 and its limitation on evidence seeking to impeach a witness's credibility to character and conduct evidence bearing solely on the witness's truthfulness. See also People v Bouchee, 400 Mich 253, 268; 253 NW2d 626 (1977), a case preceding the adoption of present MRE 608. In People v Bouchee , we held that evidence of the illegitimacy of defendant Bouchee's four children was inadmissible impeachment evidence in a trial for assault with intent to commit rape because we found such evidence unrelated to the truthfulness or untruthfulness of the defendant or his wife as witnesses. Consistent reasoning dictates the conclusion that the proffered evidence that the present complainant had sexual relations with defendant Williams in the past is likewise unrelated to the particular character trait of truthfulness or untruthfulness.