Opinion ID: 1287865
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Admission Of The Videotape Was Consistent With McAway's Right of Confrontation, Where The Child Testified And Was Cross-Examined At Trial.

Text: McAway argues that even if the videotape was admissible under I.R.E. 803(24), the catchall exception to the hearsay rule, its admission violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, because the videotape was simply a device to present B.'s testimony to the jury without allowing the defense the right of contemporaneous cross-examination. In this case, McAway argues, noncontemporaneous cross-examination could not satisfy the constitutional requirements. We disagree. In support of his argument, McAway relies on Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990), a case factually similar to the one at bar. In Wright, the defendant was convicted of two counts of lewd conduct with a minor, specifically her two daughters, ages 5½ and 2½. At the trial, it was agreed that the younger daughter was not capable of communicating with the jury, and therefore, she did not testify. However, the court did admit, under Idaho's residual hearsay exception, certain statements she made to a pediatrician having extensive experience in child abuse cases. The doctor testified that she had reluctantly answered questions about her abuse. Wright was thereafter convicted. On appeal to this Court, we reversed, finding that the admission of the doctor's testimony violated Wright's rights under the Confrontation Clause. See State v. Wright, 116 Idaho 382, 775 P.2d 1224 (1989), in which we held that the child's statements did not fall within a traditional hearsay exception and lacked particularized guarantees of trustworthiness because the doctor had conducted the interview without procedural safeguards, i.e., he failed to videotape the interview, asked leading questions, and had a preconceived idea of what the child should be disclosing. 116 Idaho at 385, 775 P.2d at 1227. Particularized guarantees of trustworthiness is a test that comes into play when the admissibility of evidence concerns a hearsay declarant who is not present for cross-examination at trial. The only way in which such evidence will be admissible is upon a showing by the prosecution of absolute necessity, a high degree of trustworthiness, and a total absence of motive to falsify. Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2539, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980). In Wright, the United States Supreme Court affirmed our decision except to the extent that the procedural requirements we identified were regarded as conditions precedent to the admission of child hearsay statements in child sexual abuse cases. Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. at 818, 110 S.Ct. at 3148. This case is distinguishable from the present case for two reasons. First, unlike in Wright, both participants to the CARES interview, B. and the registered nurse, did testify at the trial. Both parties were subject to extensive cross-examination. In California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970), the United States Supreme Court held that when a declarant of an out-of-court statement is subject to cross-examination before the trier of fact, the defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause have not been violated: It may be true that a jury would be in a better position to evaluate the truth of the prior statement if it could somehow be whisked magically back in time to witness a gruelling cross-examination of the declarant as he first gives his statement. But the question as we see it must be not whether one can somehow imagine the jury in a better position, but whether subsequent cross-examination at the defendant's trial will still afford the trier of fact a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the prior statement. On that issue, neither evidence nor reason convinces us that contemporaneous cross-examination before the ultimate trier of fact is so much more effective than subsequent examination that it must be made the touchstone of the Confrontation Clause. 399 U.S. at 160-61, 90 S.Ct. at 1936. Thus, even though there was no contemporaneous cross-examination with the statements made by B. in the videotape (which would have been a practical impossibility), we hold that McAway's constitutional rights under the Confrontation Clause were fully satisfied. Another reason we find McAway's constitutional rights under the Confrontation Clause not to have been violated is because the videotape was not hearsay, nor was it admitted into evidence under any exception to the hearsay rule. Rather, the tape was admissible under I.R.E. 801(d)(1)(B) as a prior consistent statement to rebut McAway's assertion of recent fabrication, i.e., that B.'s mother had programmed B. to testify that McAway had committed the abuse. As we stated above, in order for the jury to evaluate McAway's claim, the most effective way would be for the jury to view B.'s conversation with a neutral interviewer, out of the presence of her mother, very close to the time she first disclosed the abuse. Thus, a showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness pursuant to Ohio v. Roberts, supra , is not necessary as the out-of-court statements of B. are not hearsay.