Opinion ID: 1285448
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Constitutional Right to Present a Defense

Text: Calloway also contends that the trial court's ruling excluding the DNA evidence deprived him of his constitutional right to present a defense at trial. [13] He relies primarily on Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), which holds that courts may not mechanistically apply evidentiary rules so as to deny the admission of reliable and relevant evidence critical to an accused's defense. In line with this authority, we held in State v. Jenkins, 195 W.Va. 620, 466 S.E.2d 471 (1995), that a trial judge may not make an evidentiary ruling which deprives a criminal defendant of certain rights, such as the right to examine witnesses against him or her, to offer testimony in support of his or her defense, and to be represented by counsel, which are essential for a fair trial pursuant to the due process clause found in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and article III, § 14 of the West Virginia Constitution. Id. at 628, 466 S.E.2d at 479. The United States Supreme Court has not as yet provided any clear rule for determining when the Constitution compels the admission of such evidence, although it has implied that a balancing of interests approach to each case should be used to reconcile the competing interests involved. See Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 319, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 1112, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974). We adopted such an approach in syllabus point 6 of State v. Guthrie, 205 W.Va. 326, 518 S.E.2d 83 (1999), in the context of due process challenges to the exclusion of evidence under the Rape Shield Statute: The test used to determine whether a trial court's exclusion of proffered evidence under our rape shield law violated a defendant's due process right to a fair trial is (1) whether that testimony was relevant; (2) whether the probative value of the evidence outweighed its prejudicial effect; and (3) whether the State's compelling interests in excluding the evidence outweighed the defendant's right to present relevant evidence supportive of his or her defense. Under this test, we will reverse a trial court's ruling only if there has been a clear abuse of discretion. Applying this test to the present case, it is clear that while the evidence offered by the defense was conceivably relevant in the context of Calloway's theory at trial, it had little, if any, probative value. Again, there was no assertion at trial that the evidence in question was relevant for exculpatory purposes; rather, it was offered solely for impeachment purposes, to demonstrate a sexual relationship between the victim and her supposed boyfriend. In this vein, the DNA evidence was decidedly weak, since, as the trial court observed, the defense was unable to establish any reasonable link between the mattress stain and the individual who was alleged to have inflicted the victim's wounds. [14] Indeed, defense counsel made no effort to even identify the boyfriend through its cross-examination of the victim. The trial court specifically found that the probative value of this evidence was outweighed by potential prejudice. Because the DNA evidence clearly would not have shed any significant light upon the issue for which it was offered, we see no reason to question this analysis. We therefore conclude that the excluded evidence was not constitutionally necessary for a fair trial.