Opinion ID: 2177335
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The James T. Gilbert Case

Text: On 6 January 1989, a grand jury in Baltimore City returned three true bills against James T. Gilbert, charging him with child abuse and a variety of other offenses against the person of his stepdaughter. The crimes were alleged to cover the period from 1 September 1987 to 1 December 1987. [3] The guilt stage of the trial began on 10 July 1989 before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. On 13 July the jury returned verdicts of guilty as to child abuse, assault with intent to rape, third degree sexual offense, and assault. A motion for a new trial was heard and denied. Gilbert was sentenced to terms of imprisonment totaling 15 years. He appealed. Briefs were filed in the Court of Special Appeals, and the case was argued before a panel of that court. Before the intermediate appellate court rendered a decision, however, we ordered, on our own motion, the issuance of a writ of certiorari and directed that the parties file supplemental briefs.
In the trial court, the State filed a pretrial motion to invoke § 9-102. Gilbert objected. The hearing on the motion began with a colloquy in open court in which the judge, the prosecutor, and defense counsel participated. It was decided that the judge would question the child witness in chambers in the presence of only the prosecutor, defense counsel, and a stenographer. The defendant was to be excluded. In chambers, after the name and age of the witness were ascertained, the judge asked the child, How do you feel about testifying? The child answered, Scared. The judge fully explored the child's background. Upon persistent probing, the judge ascertained from the child that she was in the eighth grade of the Woodlawn Middle School, that she liked to study math and was good at it, that she had no hobbies  when she was not in school she would go to sleep. The judge learned that for the past two weeks the child was living with an aunt. Before that she was in a foster home for about eight months. The prosecutor explained that the child had lived with her mother and her stepfather. Then when the disclosure came [about the abuse] she was placed into foster care and she has been in foster care until about two and a half weeks ago when the authorities allowed her [to stay with an aunt]. In answer to the judge's questions, the child said she had seen her stepfather, but had not talked to him, since he had been arrested. [H]e was riding around my [aunt's] house. He kept riding around my house. She was scared of her stepfather. He would [t]ry to hurt me. The prosecutor informed the judge that the child was seeing a therapist at the Kennedy Institute. The child said she saw the therapist every Thursday. She told the therapist that she was scared of her stepfather. The therapist told her don't worry, but she did not believe that because my stepfather got ways of doing things. The judge asked the child, Do you see your mother? The child responded, No. The prosecutor explained that the mother is basically siding with her stepfather. As a preliminary to inquiring what the stepfather had done to her, the judge elicited from the child that she knew what it was to tell the truth, that if you do not tell the truth you go to jail, and that she planned to tell the truth. The judge then drew from the child the details of the stepfather's sexual abuse of her, which began when she was nine years of age. She told her mother about it, but her mother said she did not believe her and beat her. She just kept beating me. The prosecutor explained that the stepfather's alleged conduct became known upon a report by a teacher that [the child] was acting out sexually in drawing pictures in school, [and the teacher] called Protective Services and started an investigation. She was sent to a camp for sex abused children to receive group counseling. She told her aunt and the therapist about what her stepfather had done to her. The stepfather threatened to cut my head off and send it to my father [if I told]. The prosecutor told the judge that the child did not now see her natural father, although for a short time she had lived with him and his girl friend. Her mother called her while she was in foster care and told her not to testify. Asked what she said to her mother, the child responded, I didn't say nothing. I just hung up. The session ended on this note: THE COURT: Do you think you could get on the witness stand and talk? [THE CHILD]: No. The judge ruled on the motion: I am impressed that she is a very repressed young woman, that she finds it very difficult to express herself and I had to ask her to repeat things repeatedly. She is quite obviously frightened and expresses verbally and physically fear of almost everybody connected with the case. I think she even has apprehensions about her therapist, the Court, the State's Attorney and people who are clearly friendly to her. I think that she will have problems in communicating  serious problems in communicating  because of emotional distress if she is required to undertake the formality of the Courtroom and be confronted by her stepfather, the Defendant, of whom she has very obvious, severe fears. I'm also advised that her mother  she accused her own mother as being on his side, taking his side of the proceedings and, therefore, doesn't receive any support from that direction.       I do feel ... she suffers serious emotional distress and would be unable to reasonably communicate if required to testify from the witness stand and in front of her father at that time. So, I will allow the State to present her testimony through video. (Emphasis added). The judge heard from counsel on the matter. The prosecutor had available two expert witnesses with respect to the inability of the child to testify in the courtroom in the presence of the defendant. The prosecutor proffered the testimony of one of them, the therapist from the Kennedy Institute. The judge did not care to hear from them, preferring to rely, in the circumstances, on her own appraisal of witnesses from seeing [witnesses] in court all the time. The judge proclaimed: [H]aving interviewed her this morning I'm utterly convinced that we are not just going to proceed to hear from her as we usually do from witnesses. They're all apprehensive, but this little girl is obviously in tremendous fear of her [stepfather] in particular but almost anybody and everybody else as well.... The judge's final determination was that she was going to permit the § 9-102 procedure.
It so happened that two-way closed circuit television was available in another courtroom. Trial proceeded in that courtroom with the child testifying over that television circuit. Before the child took the stand, the judge fully explained to the jury the circumstances under which the child would testify. At the motion for a new trial, the prosecutor described the procedure that was followed: [T]he victim was ... in the same courtroom area as the defendant, but off in another room. Present in that room was the court clerk, myself, and defense counsel.... [T]he victim had the opportunity to observe the defendant on a monitor which was seated next to her.... [T]here was a monitor, a telephone monitor of sorts in the courtroom where the defendant was able to communicate with his attorney during the course of the entire direct and cross-examination of the victim. There was no way that anyone in the courtroom or myself or the court clerk or anyone else could hear what was being said between the defendant and his attorney, and at all times they were maintaining contact, talking by way of the telephone. In addition, we had in the courtroom and also in chambers a method by which the Judge could hear everything going on in chambers and we could hear everything that was going on in the courtroom. That is the way the microphone setup was. In the courtroom there was a big screen TV where everyone in the courtroom could observe the victim in color at the same time, the jury, the Judge and any spectators as well as the defendant.