Opinion ID: 2981124
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sexual Abuse by Pastor-Father

Text: We will first address the statements in KB’s questionnaire concerning the alleged abuse by her father, also a pastor.5 In that document, KB wrote that when she was seven years old, her father “stood naked in the bathtub, soaped up, tried to get [her] to touch him,” and that this continued for 10 years. When cross-examining her on this statement for purposes of making an appellate record, outside of the hearing of the jury, defense counsel asked KB if it would surprise her if her father told an investigator KB’s allegations were untrue. In his brief, Piscopo states that this evidence was admissible to show that KB’s perception of the events at the deliverance ceremony was unreliable. He states that his “argument to the jury would have been that [KB] had a bias against male pastors because of her bad experiences with a pastor who happened to also be her father,” and that this bias “caused her to perceive the touchings as sexual when in fact they were not.” 5 We note that this evidence is not even mentioned in Piscopo’s actual habeas petition. In that document, he lists only two grounds raised: Whether the Petitioner’s constitutional right of confrontation was violated when he was not allowed to question his accuser about her statement that she was raped by a demon? Whether the Petitioner’s rights to Due Process and a Fair Trial under the Michigan and Federal Constitutions were violated when an expert witness was not allowed to testify[?] Although the claim was not included in the habeas petition itself, we address it because the parties briefed the issue before state courts and the federal district court, it was addressed in the Michigan Court of Appeals opinion and the federal district court habeas opinion, and it was briefed by both parties on appeal. No. 10-2617 6 At the time of the deliverance ceremony, KB (according to her handwritten document) was 43 years old. The accuracy of the reported abuse by her father, decades in the past, was questioned by defense counsel in the record he made for appeal. This suggests that defense counsel wanted to admit the evidence of KB’s allegations, as well as shed uncertainty upon their accuracy. We question how evidence of sexual abuse by KB’s father (whether the jury learned that such abuse was disputed by the father or not) could be used to show a propensity on the part of KB to consider much later, physical contact by a pastor to be sexual in nature. Piscopo does not develop any theory as to why the fact that KB’s father was a pastor might cause her to single out other pastors for false accusations of offensive sexual conduct. Under the Sixth Amendment, a criminal defendant is guaranteed the right to confront “witnesses against him.” U.S. C ONST. amend. VI. In Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974), the Supreme Court found that the state trial court had violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights by failing to allow his impeachment of a prosecution witness—a juvenile—with that witness’s prior criminal record. Id. at 310-11. In the case of Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673 (1986), which examined the Davis case, the Supreme Court emphasized that the trial court has “wide latitude” to impose “reasonable limits” to avoid “harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness’ safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant.” Id. at 679. In Van Arsdall, the defendant sought to impeach a witness whose drunkenness charge was dropped after he agreed to talk to the prosecutor about the defendant’s case. That court found a Sixth Amendment violation where No. 10-2617 7 the trial court had “prohibited all inquiry into the possibility that [the witness] would be biased as a result of the State’s dismissal of his pending public drunkenness charge.” Id. In our decision in Boggs v. Collins, 226 F.3d 728 (6th Cir. 2000), the habeas action of a defendant convicted of rape, we considered the trial court’s exclusion of evidence of a prior, allegedly false accusation of rape. Determining that the desired cross-examination was an intended attack on the witness’s general credibility, and finding no plausible defense theory of motive or bias, we found no constitutional violation in its exclusion. Id. at 740. We considered the Davis and Van Arsdall cases in concluding “that cross-examination as to bias, motive or prejudice is constitutionally protected, but cross-examination as to general credibility is not.” Boggs, 226 F.3d at 737. As the parties recognize, this “rule” noted in Boggs was vigorously questioned by our decision in Vasquez v. Jones, 496 F.3d 564, 574 (6th Cir. 2007). In Vasquez, we held that the trial court’s refusal to allow a defendant to impeach hearsay testimony with a witness’s prior criminal record violated the Confrontation Clause. We held the proposition to be equally true whether the cross-examination went to credibility or bias. We found the Boggs case nondispositive on several fronts, including the trial court’s reliance on the rape shield statute, and distinguishable facts.6 6 The parties dispute whether the evidence in the questionnaire—alleging sexual abuse by the father and rape by demons—was properly excluded under Michigan’s rape shield statute. As the state argued, statelaw evidentiary claims are not cognizable on habeas review. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 68 (1991). Piscopo cites Lewis v. Wilkinson, 307 F.3d 413 (6th Cir. 2002), as an example of a situation where Sixth Amendment protections “trumped” a state’s rape-shield statute. He also suggests, alternatively, that he could avoid application of the rape shield law by being allowed to admit evidence of unspecified abuse by the father, which would allow him to develop his theory of bias against male pastors. Because we find no Sixth Amendment violations here, we decline to further address these arguments. No. 10-2617 8 Regardless of whether Piscopo sought to admit this evidence as an attack on KB’s credibility, generally, or more specifically to show a bias or motive on the part of KB, the state appellate court did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent in upholding its exclusion. The instant case does not involve a “prototypical form of bias,” as did the Van Arsdall and Davis cases. The assertion that the questionnaire answers reveal a bias against pastors is speculative. Nonetheless, defense counsel was allowed to pursue this argument. On more than one occasion defense counsel did tell the jury that KB had been abused by men, in particular her father, and also told the jury that KB had filled out “paperwork” indicating that she had issues with men and her father. At closing, defense counsel argued that [y]ou cannot put a burden on us to find out why KR and KB testified the way they did. Did they have pre-set ideas in their head of what was happening? Did they have some fears? I don’t know who’s been involved in a car accident, but if you’re behind that wheel, and you’re-you’re like this. You’re jumpy. That’s normal, human reaction. We don’t know if these, what their backgrounds were, whether they were jumpy around men, whether they had trouble with Pastor, whether they had trouble with men. We weren’t allowed to find out. But if they were, and someone came up after they’re in an altered state of consciousness, as Jim Bacon testifies, and scares them, they’re going to imagine all kinds of things happened. As noted by the district court, the questioning of KB on this evidence by defense counsel suggests that, at that juncture, the defense intended to use the evidence to show a prior false accusation of sexual abuse. Such evidence would be used to attack KB’s credibility, not to show a bias. In any event, as both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the district court noted, the allegations against KB’s father are “removed in time and markedly different” from those made against Piscopo. No. 10-2617 9 Given the multiple possible reasons counsel sought to have the evidence admitted, the trial court’s ruling was not inconsistent with Davis or Van Arsdall. The Michigan court’s conclusion that Piscopo’s rights under the Confrontation Clause were not violated by the exclusion of this evidence was not unreasonable.