Opinion ID: 2075944
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Impeachment of W.D. with her prior accusations.

Text: With some necessary accommodation of the rights of complainants in sexual offense cases, the issue here under discussion falls within the general rubric of the claim-minded plaintiff, typified by the shepherd boy who cried Wolf! once too often. As Professor McCormick has correctly noted, the courts of the District of Columbia are notably liberal in receiving evidence of claim-mindedness and allowing the jury to assess its weight. E. CLEARY, McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 196, at 580 n. 10 (3d ed. 1984) (hereinafter McCORMICK). The leading case in this jurisdiction is Mintz v. Premier Cab Association, Inc., 75 U.S.App.D.C. 389, 127 F.2d 744 (1942), a personal injury action in which the court sustained the trial court's decision to permit the cross-examination of the plaintiff with regard to two prior claims: Fortuitous events of a given sort are less likely to happen repeatedly than once. The fact that a witness has told several stories involving similar fortuitous events tends, therefore, to create a conflict between his testimony and normal experience. So it has been held that one who furnishes an alibi for a criminal defendant may be asked whether he has furnished other alibis for the same defendant; one who accuses a man of robbing him while he was drunk may be asked whether he has made the same charge against other men; the prosecuting witness in a rape case may be asked whether she has made similar charges against other men .... This type of evidence, like many other types, may create prejudice but is believed to be worth more than it costs.       That all three of appellant's stories may have been true affects the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. It was for the jury to decide from all the evidence, and from its observation of appellant on the stand, whether she was merely unlucky or was claim-minded. Id. at 389-90, 127 F.2d at 744-45 (emphasis added and footnote omitted). Accord, Manes v. Dowling, 375 A.2d 221, 223 (D.C. 1977); Evans v. Greyhound Corp., 200 A.2d 194, 196 (D.C.1964). Under the Mintz analysis, the party seeking to cross-examine the complaining witness about other complaints need not first prove their falsity. The principle that lightning does not usually strike the same person twice (or four times or nine times) is deemed sufficiently persuasive to warrant leaving it to the jury to assess the significance of past complaints. The courts of this jurisdiction avoid what Judge Posner has called crabbed notions of relevance or excessive mistrust of juries, Riordan v. Kempiners, 831 F.2d 690, 698 (7th Cir. 1987), and decline to keep from properly instructed jurors the kinds of information which, as a matter of common sense and human experience, might well affect their rational assessment of the situation. Although plainly obiter dictum, the allusion in the Mintz opinion to a rape complainant is broad enough, for all practical purposes, to reach the present case. [22] The frequency with which a woman or girl has alleged that various men have sexually assaulted her was considered to be something the jury should know in deciding whether to believe her. Neither before Mintz nor in the forty-seven years since that decision has this court squarely confronted the issue in a case in which the defendant sought to cross-examine the alleged victim of a sexual assault about prior charges against other men. Although the trial judge relied primarily on Sherer, discussed in some detail at page 340, below, the closest case to the present one is Lawrence. Lawrence was charged with taking indecent liberties with a six-year-old girl. One of the witnesses against him was Darlene Mayo, the child's aunt. Lawrence sought to cross-examine Ms. Mayo about what he claimed were prior false allegations by her of other incidents of sexual abuse in the family. The trial judge, without conducting a voir dire examination as to the truth or falsity of Ms. Mayo's other charges, refused to permit the inquiry. Lawrence was found guilty, but this court reversed his conviction. Emphasizing that the confrontation clause was implicated and that the defendant's right to challenge the credibility of prosecution witnesses was protected by that clause, the court said: An examination of the record reflects a curtailment of an appropriate line of cross-examination which prevented the jury from receiving information essential to an assessment of Darlene Mayo's credibility as a government witness. Appellant sought to confront Darlene Mayo with the fact that she had accused Michael Mayo in April 1981 of having intercourse with her five-year-old daughter and with the fact that she had accused Jacqueline in July 1981 of having intercourse with their elderly uncle. The trial court refused to allow this line of inquiry. Regardless of her response, the jury could have assessed Mayo's truthfulness and veracity by defense counsel's probe of this sensitive area and have viewed her testimony with greater skepticism. The trial court's action may have kept from the jury relevant and important facts bearing on the trustworthiness of crucial testimony [of] a key witness [whose] testimony establishes a required element of the charged offense [and] has little independent corroboration. 482 A.2d at 377 (internal quotation marks and alteration marks omitted). The court also stated that the trial court's error in this curtailment of cross-examination was rendered more severe because Ms. Mayo was a key prosecution witness. Id. Lawrence is distinguishable from the present case in two respects. First, the trial judge made no attempt, outside the presence of the jury, to assess the truth or falsity of Ms. Mayo's other charges. Second, the case did not involve other complaints by the alleged victim of the crime, so that the protection of complaining witnesses from intrusion into private facts is not directly implicated. [23] The decision is important for present purposes, however, because this court did not ground its ruling on the trial judge's failure to conduct a voir dire examination. Rather the court held that cross-examination of a key witness about her other accusations was critical to the jury's opportunity to assess her credibility, and this proposition was not conditioned on any previous finding that the other allegations were false. Courts in other jurisdictions have approached the issue here presented in a variety of ways. See generally Annot., Impeachment or Cross-Examination of Prosecuting Witness in Sexual Offense Trial by Showing That Similar Charges Were Made Against Other Persons, 71 A.L.R.4th 469 (1989). Some have been quite liberal in permitting such examination. [24] Others have required the defendant, before being permitted to cross-examine the complaining witness as to charges which she had made against others, to show, outside the presence of the jury, that the other complaints have been proved or conceded to be false. [25] In my opinion, the most persuasive approach is the intermediate one taken by those courts which require the defendant to demonstrate that there is a reasonable bona fide basis for the proposed line of interrogation. See, e.g., Woods v. State, 657 P.2d 180, 182 (Okla.Cr.App.1983); State v. LeClair, 83 Or.App. 121, 126-32, 730 P.2d 609, 613-16 (1986), review denied, 303 Or. 74, 734 P.2d 354 (1987); Commonwealth v. Bohannon, supra, 376 Mass. at 94-95, 378 N.E.2d at 991. In LeClair, the court indicated that, under the confrontation clause, such cross-examination must be permitted, inter alia, where there is some evidence that the complaining witness has made prior false accusations, unless the probative value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect. 83 Or.App. at 129, 730 P.2d at 615. In Bohannon, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, applying a similar test, stated that leave of court to cross-examine as to other charges should be obtained in advance, and held that such cross-examination should have been permitted where the defendant made an offer of proof which indicated that he had a factual basis from independent third party records for concluding that prior allegations of rape had, in fact, been made and were, in fact, untrue. 376 Mass. at 95, 378 N.E.2d at 991. These decisions, in my view, provide the defendant with a reasonable opportunity for cross-examination, but are also appropriately sensitive to the interests of the complaining witness.