Opinion ID: 1163582
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: court's refusal to allow surrebuttal testimony

Text: Defendant charges error for the court to have denied the defendant the opportunity for surrebuttal after the State had introduced the .22 Derringer pistol and had elicited testimony about the .38 Smith and Wesson for the first time in rebuttal. There was a gun involved in this case, and whether or not it was a .22 Derringer (without a cylinder) or a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson (with a cylinder) is of serious consequence in the area of witness credibility. A young boy, seventeen years old, named Kevin Doing, testified for the defense in his case in chief and said that when Haystack asked Janski to get the hash (on the 6th of January) he said: ... go get the hash and bring it right back here, And: ... don't mess around with Haystack. Doing testified that when these things were said Laabs had a gun pushed into Gary Janski's stomach. In attempting to describe the gun, Doing remembered it as a gray, Derringer-type pistol, .22, with a white handle. On cross-examination the boy represented that the gun had a cylinder (a Derringer does not have a cylinder). Doing was re-called by the State to identify a certain gun and was handed State's Exhibit 3 for identification, which was a Derringer. He responded to the inquiry as follows: ... this isn't the gun I saw [on the 6th of January], the gun had a cylinder right here (indicating), it had a shorter barrel, the cylinder right here, light gray handle. [Bracketed information mine] It now becomes extremely important to know if Laabs was using or carrying a gun with a cylinder in his undercover work. This is so because if he was his credibility would be suspect since he said he was not carrying or using a gun answering this description on the 6th of January. If he was not carrying the .38 at that time, the integrity of Doing's testimony would be shattered. In rebuttal, for the first time in the case, on direct examination by the State, Laabs was interrogated about a .38 revolver and he said he carried one only once for approximately five hours about a week after the 6th of January. Officer Fields, his supervisor, verified this. The State rested rebuttal without offering the .22 Derringer and the court excused the jury. At this junction, counsel for the State announced that he wished to make a motion for the record. The Court said: You wish to reopen? MR. LEWIS: For the purpose of offering State's Exhibit 3. MR. WHITAKER: And we may want to reopen with respect to the witnesses with respect to that gun now it is in evidence. It wasn't in evidence, it is another thing if it is in. [Emphasis mine] THE COURT: You mean in the morning? MR. WHITAKER: Yes, I won't take much time, we are trying to locate this Jim Ford, who was the one at the Mini Mart, the manager of the Mini Marts, and three or four others that he has pulled a gun on. Now, anyway the gun is in evidence and it has been offered, we have something else to rebutt [sic]. THE COURT: All right, shall we now proceed with the Instructions and in the morning, if you wish to reopen briefly, Mr. Whitaker, you may do so. The next morning the court asked defense counsel to dictate his request (to reopen) into the record, and, among other things, the request contained these assertions: Counsel for accused represented to the court that his surrebuttal witnesses were present and ready to testify. He asked permission to reopen since, during the State's rebuttal testimony the day before the .38 Smith and Wesson was shown to the jury for the first time. In addition, counsel requested permission to reopen because the State was permitted to reopen to introduce the.22 caliber Derringer which was admitted into evidence. [6] Counsel indicated that his request to reopen was addressed to his desire to place in the record the testimony of witnesses James Ford and Bill Pierce, from the Mini-Mart of North Casper, and counsel said: ... both of whom have seen the Witness Laabs in the possession of a .38 caliber revolver on a number of occasions. ... We are prepared to prove he was in on two separate occasions... . [Emphasis mine] It should be remembered here that Laabs and Fields both had testified on rebuttal that the only time that Laabs had ever carried a .38 was on one occasion for five hours on a date which apparently fell between the 10th and the 14th of January, 1973. Defense counsel further offered to prove through the testimony of Ford and Pierce that Laabs used the .38 Smith and Wesson in his undercover activities. Laabs, in rebuttal, had denied the use of this gun in this manner. In resisting the request of the defense to reopen, the county attorney, addressing the court, said that the State's rebuttal testimony was offered solely for the following purpose: The only thing we offered the gun for was to rebut the testimony of the young man that this Derringer that Laabs was carrying had a cylinder on it, a revolver-type cylinder, as he testified. [Italics mine] This is the very reason that it was error to not permit defendant to reopen for the purpose indicated in his counsel's offer, after granting permission to the State to introduce testimony with respect to the .38 caliber gun in rebuttal for the first time, and permitting the State to introduce and receive the Derringer after the close of all the testimony. It then became the absolute right of defendant to rebut any new matter introduced on rebuttal by the State with respect to these guns and was not for the court to decide in the exercise of its discretion. The offered testimony on the part of defendant would not, in my way of thinking, have been collateral to the principal issues as the court ruled. The real damage flowing from the court's refusal to hear the testimony of Ford and Pierce might well have been to destroy the credibility of Doing by leaving unimpeached the testimony of the State's principal witnesses, Laabs and Fields, even though the impeaching witnesses for defense were available and even though the defense had not had a prior opportunity to rebut the damaging evidence. If Laabs had had a .38 on only one occasion for five hours between the 10th and 14th of January, as he and Fields testified, and if, on the other hand, Ford and Pierce would have testified that on: a number of occasions they had seen Laabs with a .38 Smith and Wesson, this would have been devastating to the credibility of Haystack-Laabs and would have removed the impeaching damage that the State's witnesses rendered to the testimony of Doing. My main concern is not so much with the question of whether the court should have permitted the defendant to reopen since this is within the sound discretion of the court. I am bothered about what I perceive to be error as a matter of law to have refused to permit surrebuttal testimony to counter the rebuttal testimony of Fields and Laabs to the effect that the only time that Laabs carried a pistol with a cylinder was for five hours a week after the 6th of January, 1973. I cannot agree with Mr. Justice Raper when he says, in writing the majority opinion and speaking about the gun testimony, The defendant had his opportunity to attack the credibility of the witness Laabs during his own case and passed it up., citing the following authority: As said in State v. Alexander, 1958, 78 Wyo. 324, 347, 324 P.2d 831, 839, cert. den. 363 U.S. 850, 80 S.Ct. 1630, 4 L.Ed.2d 1733, in dealing with the denial of surrebuttal: `   While it is true, as explained by Wigmore, supra, § 1874, pp. 517-518, and 1 Chamberlayne, The Modern Law of Evidence, § 383, pp. 516-517, that new facts brought out on rebuttal may properly be met by surrebuttal evidence, that rule does not permit surrebuttal merely to supply evidence which could have been given in chief or to cumulate additional evidence or to fortify evidence already given, or to supplement such evidence because it has been impeached upon rebuttal.   ' In my judgment the defendant had no opportunity to impeach the testimony of Laabs and Fields concerning the carrying of the .38 automatic because it was brought out on rebuttal for the first time. Indeed, Doing testified about guns but the devastating testimony had to do with the assertions of Laabs and Fields that such a gun (with a cylinder) had not been carried by Laabs during the critical period of time pertinent to the alleged crime. This testimony, according to the offer of proof, could have been rebutted and, in my opinion, the court erred in not permitting it. In VI Wigmore on Evidence, Third Edition, it is said by the author at page 510: Everything relevant as a part of the case in chief would naturally have been already put in; and a rebuttal is necessary only because, ... . new subordinate evidential facts have been offered.... (In the defendant's case the new subordinate facts offered were the ones introduced through the testimony of Doing where he said he saw Laabs use the gun on Janski and that it was a Derringer with a cylinder.) The eminent writer then says the State had an absolute right to put in rebuttal evidence to this testimony  see § 1873, p. 517, sub-paragraph 4: For matters properly not evidential until the rebuttal, the proponent has a right to put them in at that time (i.e., the State's right to cross-examine Doing and to introduce the testimony that the Derringer did not have a cylinder, as well as Laabs' and Fields' testimony that Laabs only had a.38 with cylinder for one day for five hours), and they are therefore not subject to the discretionary exclusion of the trial Court.  [Parenthetical matters and emphasis mine] With respect to the OPPONENT'S CASE IN REJOINDER, § 1874, pp. 517-518, the author says (on the question of Janski's right to respond to true rebuttal testimony): For the opponent's case in rejoinder there remain properly only two sorts of evidence, namely, evidence explaining away the effect of new facts brought forward by the proponent in rebuttal, and evidence impeaching the witness testifying in rebuttal.... [Emphasis mine] The author goes on to say: ... . for evidence legitimately receivable in rejoinder (Janski's proposed evidence of the Mini-Mart people who, under the offer of proof would have testified that Laabs used a .38 in his undercover work on different occasions than the one to which he testified)  in particular, evidence impeaching rebuttal witnesses  there has been no prior opportunity to adduce it (and this would be true with respect to the Mini-Mart witnesses since the .38 had not come into evidence until the State introduced it as a part of its rebuttal to the testimony of Doing that the gun he saw pushed into Janski's stomach had a cylinder), and hence it is here entitled to be received, without depending on the Court's discretion to relax the usual order; for this class of evidence, what has been said in the foregoing section (§ 1873, para. 4) (supra) is equally applicable.  [Parenthetical matters and emphasis mine] For the reasons stated above, I would hold that the refusal of the lower court to permit the introduction of the proffered testimony was prejudicial to the defendant, deprived him of a fair trial, and thus was reversible error. In summary, I would have held that the defendant was trapped. It was error not to permit the defendant to counter the new matter raised by the State in rebuttal. There was no error in the court's refusing the defendant's counsel the right to inquire into Laabs' criminal charges for which there had been no conviction. The trial court did not commit error in refusing to dismiss the proceedings because of the variance between the date charged in the information as being the date on which the crime was committed and the dates testified to by certain witnesses and as shown by an exhibit in the record. I would have denied the petition for rehearing.