Opinion ID: 2328505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Cabrera's Motion for a New Trial and the Mathis Testimony

Text: Several months after his conviction, Cabrera moved for a new trial based on certain post-trial, out-of-court statements made by Mileka Mathis, the witness who testified that the belt was of a style that Cabrera might have worn around the time of the murders. In certain statements given to Cabrera's counsel after trial, Mathis purported to recant her testimony and claimed that she had been coerced into giving perjured testimony at trial. At an evidentiary hearing on the motion for a new trial conducted by the trial judge, Mathis declined to testify on grounds of self-incrimination. Thus, she became unavailable as a witness. [27] Cabrera's attorneys then sought to introduce Mathis' post-conviction statements. Those statements of the unavailable declarant, Mathis, constitute hearsay because they were offered to prove the truth of their contents. The question before the trial judge, therefore, was whether the post-conviction statements should be admitted under either of two exceptions to the hearsay rule: D.R.E. 804(b)(3) that pertains to statements against interest, and D.R.E. 807, the residual exception relating to statements not covered by other exceptions but having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness. [28] The circumstances surrounding this issue, as adduced at the evidentiary hearing, are as follows. In August 2001, Mathis began writing letters to Cabrera in prison. She wrote more than twenty letters over a three-month period. In September 2001, Mathis spoke with Cabrera's attorneys, indicating that her testimony at trial had been perjured and that Detective Lemon had coerced her into giving the false testimony. She stated that her feelings of guilt caused her to desire to recant her testimony. [29] Mathis asserted that she had no basis for testifying about what type of clothing Cabrera typically wore because she had only a one-night relationship with him. She also claimed she was afraid of how a certain someone might react to her recantation. Then, in October 2001, Mathis filed a complaint with the police alleging that Cabrera had written her threatening letters that caused her to recant her testimony. Cabrera denied writing the letters. The defense engaged a handwriting expert who opined that Cabrera had not written the threatening letters submitted to police by Mathis, but rather that Mathis was more likely the author. At the evidentiary hearing on the motion for a new trial, following Mathis' refusal to testify, Lemon testified that he never had sex with Mathis, denied coercing Mathis into giving perjured testimony and said that Mathis never told him that what he wanted her to say was untrue. Cabrera claims that a new trial should have been granted because of Mathis' recantation of her trial testimony. The State argues that a grant of a new trial would be based on inadmissible hearsay contained in Mathis' statements to defense counsel. We review for abuse of discretion a trial court's denial of a motion for a new trial based on recantation of testimony. [30] We also review for abuse of discretion the trial court's decisions regarding the admissibility of evidence. [31] A trial court should grant a new trial based on a witness' recantation only if (1) the court is reasonably well satisfied that the testimony given by a material witness is false, (2) without the evidence the jury might have reached a different conclusion, and (3) the false testimony took the party seeking the new trial by surprise and the party was unable to meet it, or the party did not know of its falsity until after the trial. [32] In order to meet the first prong, Cabrera had to show that Mathis' trial testimony was false. The trial judge ruled that Cabrera failed to carry this burden because the hearsay statements were inadmissible and the other evidence at the hearing suggested that it was Mathis' recantation, and not her trial testimony, that was false. Because the trial judge ruled that the hearsay statements were inadmissible, he had no basis on which to conclude that the testimony of a material witness was false. Thus, the key issue is whether the trial judge abused his discretion in refusing to admit Mathis' post-conviction statements in evidence.