Opinion ID: 626118
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Constitutionality of the limitations on Jordan's cross-examination of K.W.

Text: Jordan raises what appear to be two distinct arguments relating to the trial court's imposition of the rape-shield law to limit his counsel's cross-examination of K.W. First, he argues that the trial court should have concluded that the State waived the rape-shield protections by asking about C.A.'s sexual history and thus opened the door to cross-examination on that issue. Because his appellate brief is unclear on this point, we will construe Jordan's argument for the purposes of this analysis as a challenge to the trial court's prohibition against using K.W.'s cross-examination testimony to impeach C.A. about her sexual history. Jordan's second argument is that his trial was rendered fundamentally unfair because the trial court imposed the strictures of the rape-shield law against him, but not against the State during its direct examination of C.A. We will address each point in turn.
Although the Confrontation Clause protects a defendant's right to cross-examine witnesses, this right is not absolute. Instead, the Constitution guarantees only an opportunity for effective cross-examination, not cross-examination that is effective in whatever way, and to whatever extent, the defense might wish. Delaware v. Fensterer, 474 U.S. 15, 20, 106 S.Ct. 292, 88 L.Ed.2d 15 (1985) (emphasis in original). The Supreme Court has recognized that trial judges retain wide latitude... to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986). One such limit comes in the form of Ohio's rape-shield law, which provides as follows: Evidence of specific instances of the victim's sexual activity, opinion evidence of the victim's sexual activity, and reputation evidence of the victim's sexual activity shall not be admitted under this section unless it involves evidence of the origin of semen, pregnancy, or disease, or the victim's past sexual activity with the offender, and only to the extent that the court finds that the evidence is material to a fact at issue in the case and that its inflammatory or prejudicial nature does not outweigh its probative value. Ohio Rev.Code § 2907.02(D); State v. Williams, 21 Ohio St.3d 33, 487 N.E.2d 560, 561 (1986) (per curiam) (explaining that this provision essentially prohibits the introduction of any extrinsic evidence pertaining to the victim's sexual activity). Where a trial court limits a defendant's cross-examination in a manner that infringes upon the protections afforded by the Confrontation Clause, the court must balance the limitation against the competing interests at stake. Lewis v. Wilkinson, 307 F.3d 413, 421 (6th Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). These interests include the prevention of minitrials on collateral issues, including the victim's history, see id. at 422; State v. Gardner, 59 Ohio St.2d 14, 391 N.E.2d 337, 340 (1979); the probative or material value of the evidence toward the issues at trial, see Lewis, 307 F.3d at 422; Gardner, 391 N.E.2d at 340-41; the prejudicial or inflammatory nature of the evidence sought to be introduced, see Gardner, 391 N.E.2d at 340-41; State v. Whiteside, No. 19482, 2003 WL 21360247, at  (Ohio Ct.App. June 13, 2003) (unpublished opinion); whether the trial court offered a cautionary instruction and/or limited the scope of cross-examination, see Lewis, 307 F.3d at 422, as well as the extent to which the defendant was able to cross-examine the witness, United States v. Hynes, 467 F.3d 951, 959-60 (6th Cir.2006); Boggs v. Collins, 226 F.3d 728, 745 (6th Cir.2000); and, possibly, which party invoked the law's protections, see Gardner, 391 N.E.2d at 341; Williams, 487 N.E.2d at 563.
Jordan concedes that Ohio's rapeshield law generally prevents him from introducing evidence of C.A.'s sexual history. He instead argues that the State waived the protections of this law and opened the door to cross-examination of any witness about C.A.'s sexual history through its questions about C.A.'s virginity. But Jordan has not proffered any authority supporting this argument and admitted at oral argument that he has no such authority. The question before the Ohio Court of Appeals was whether the State's allegedly improper conduct at trial was sufficient to waive the rape-shield protections and permit the cross-examination of third-party witnesses about C.A.'s sexual history. Our task, however, is not to adjudicate whether the Ohio Court of Appeals reached the correct conclusion concerning Jordan's cross-examination of K.W., but instead to determine whether the state court's decision was contrary to or represented an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. See Lewis, 307 F.3d at 420 (describing the court's function as deciding whether [the exclusion of evidence by the trial judge] rendered petitioner's trial so fundamentally unfair as to constitute a denial of federal constitutional rights). The Ohio Court of Appeals in this case concludedwith little explanationthat the doctrine of waiver does not apply to this situation and instead applied the multi-factored balancing test described above in upholding the trial court's evidentiary ruling. State v. Jordan, No. 06 HA 586, 2007 WL 1880029, at -7 (Ohio Ct.App. June 22, 2007) (unpublished opinion). Jordan has not supplied us with any authority demonstrating that the state court's decision was improper. Because the Supreme Court has not explicitly addressed this issue and because of the broad latitude afforded to trial courts on evidentiary issues, we are not persuaded that the Ohio Court of Appeals' decision on Jordan's waiver argument was either contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law.
In the context of cross-examination under a rape-shield law, the Supreme Court has distinguished between a general attack on the credibility of a witnessin which the cross-examiner intends to afford the jury a basis to infer that the witness'[s] character is such that he would be less likely than the average trustworthy citizen to be truthful in his testimonyand a more particular attack on credibility directed toward revealing possible biases, prejudices, or ulterior motives as they may relate directly to issues or personalities in the case at hand. Boggs v. Collins, 226 F.3d 728, 736 (6th Cir.2000) (quoting Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 316, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974)); see also Lewis, 307 F.3d at 421 (determining that excerpts from the victim's diary were admissible because they tended to suggest a motive to lie). Only the latter form of cross-examinationseeking evidence of bias or other motivations for the witness's testimonyis considered constitutionally protected because its importance outweighs any countervailing state interests. Boggs, 226 F.3d at 736. In this context, then, a criminal defendant states a violation of the confrontation clause by showing that he was prohibited from engaging in otherwise appropriate cross-examination designed to show a prototypical form of bias on the part of the witness. Id. at 737 (quoting Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 680, 106 S.Ct. 1431) (emphasis in original). But the [Supreme] Court neither holds nor suggests that the Constitution confers a right in every case to impeach the general credibility of a witness through cross-examination. Id. (quoting Davis, 415 U.S. at 321, 94 S.Ct. 1105 (Stewart, J., concurring)). No matter how central an accuser's credibility is to a caseindeed, her credibility will almost always be the cornerstone ...the Constitution does not require that a defendant be given the opportunity to wage a general attack on credibility by pointing to individual instances of past conduct. Id. at 740 (ellipses added, emphasis in original) (rejecting on this ground the defendant's argument that the victim's credibility was crucial to his case and that any evidence bearing on credibility must be admitted). Several federal circuit courts, including our own, have therefore held that a defendant fails to state a confrontation-clause violation where the testimony barred by the rape-shield law challenges only the witness's general credibility. Id. at 737-38 (discussing Hughes v. Raines, 641 F.2d 790 (9th Cir.1981), and United States v. Bartlett, 856 F.2d 1071 (8th Cir.1988), and citing several other cases without discussion). With respect to a defendant's ability to present extrinsic evidence for impeachment, moreover, this court has noted that the Supreme Court has not recognized the sweep of the Confrontation Clause to encompass the right to impeach an adverse witness by putting on a third-party witness. Harrington v. Jackson, 1 Fed. Appx. 367, 370 (6th Cir.2001). For this reason, the state court's decision in Harrington was found not to be contrary to Supreme Court precedent because this court remain[ed] unconvinced that unearthing bias by extrinsic evidence is particularly significant or a fundamental element of the accused's defense, especially in light of the fact that Petitioner had sufficient opportunity to unearth bias on cross-examination. Id. at 372 (internal quotation marks omitted). This court similarly determined in Farley v. Lafler, 193 Fed.Appx. 543, 547 (6th Cir.2006), that a defendant was not entitled under the Confrontation Clause to seek to impeach the primary government witness through cross-examination of a different government witness, with what amounts to extrinsic evidence of the primary witness's credibility. Id. The Farley court concluded that the state court's exclusion of this evidence was not a violation of clearly established Supreme Court precedent because neither the Supreme Court nor any federal court of appeals has ever heldor even suggestedthat the longstanding rules restricting the use of specific instances and extrinsic evidence to impeach a witness's credibility pose constitutional problems. Id. at 548 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). As in Harrington, the Farley court noted that the petitioner could have elicited the testimony he sought on cross-examination of the primary witness, but failed to capitalize on this opportunity. Id. at 547. Based on these cases, a defendant is generally unable to establish a confrontation-clause violation where he or she is denied the opportunity to present extrinsic evidence that would impeach another witness.
Jordan acknowledges that his counsel sought to impeach C.A. through K.W.'s cross-examination. He argues that the trial court erroneously applied the protections of the rape-shield law to preclude his counsel from doing so, yet declined to employ this statutory bar against the State's initial questions about C.A.'s virginity. But, as previously noted, the Ohio Court of Appeals denied any relief on the basis that C.A.'s sexual history was irrelevant to Jordan's defense that he and C.A. never actually engaged in sexual conduct. See State v. Jordan, No. 06 HA 586, 2007 WL 1880029, at  (Ohio Ct.App. June 22, 2007) (unpublished opinion). In his appellate brief, the only explanation that Jordan provides to justify the proposed cross-examination of K.W. is that [c]redibility is an issue in this case and the opening of this door leads to a particularized attack on credibility. But his argument that an attack on the victim's general credibility trumps Ohio's rape-shield law is the same one that was squarely rejected by this court in Boggs. See 226 F.3d at 737-40. This court has further held that the Confrontation Clause does not guarantee a criminal defendant the right to impeach one witness through the cross-examination of another witness, regardless of whether the testimony would address credibility or bias. See Farley, 193 Fed.Appx. at 547 (noting that the defendant cannot accomplish through a third party what he would be prohibited from doing during the victim's cross-examination). Farley and Harrington both indicate that the constitutional balancing test described above weighs in favor of exclusion, particularly where the defendant was afforded a sufficient opportunity to cross-examine the victim directly. See Farley, 193 Fed.Appx. at 547; Harrington, 1 Fed.Appx. at 370-71. Moreover, our rules of evidence generally frown upon using evidence of past `wrongs' or `acts' to show `the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith' on a later occasion. Boggs, 226 F.3d at 744 (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 404(b); Ohio R. Evid. 404(b)). The State further argues that questions about the victim's lack of sexual history do not fall within the protections of the rape-shield law in any event. Although we question the soundness of this argument, see State v. Whiteside, No. 19482, 2003 WL 21360247, at  (Ohio Ct.App. June 13, 2003) (unpublished opinion) (explaining that an assertion that no sexual activity took place may fall within the rape-shield law's protections), we have no need to address the proper scope of the statute. Instead, we conclude that the trial court did not err in applying the rape-shield law even if the State's questions about C.A.'s virginity should have been excluded. Jordan, after all, failed to object or alert the court to an error when the prosecutor questioned C.A., while the prosecutor did lodge an objection to defense counsel's questioning of K.W. That the trial court addressed only the issues brought to its attention does not suggest that the court imposed a double standard on the parties. In sum, the Ohio Court of Appeals' decision that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to allow the proposed cross-examination of K.W. is not contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law. Jordan has therefore failed to establish a confrontation-clause claim arising out of the limitations placed on his counsel's cross-examination of K.W.
Even if a confrontation-clause violation had occurred, we would not grant Jordan's habeas petition unless the state trial court's ruling was more than a harmless error. See Lewis v. Wilkinson, 307 F.3d 413, 420 (6th Cir.2002) (This court's duty is not to determine whether the exclusion of the evidence by the trial judge was correct or incorrect under state law, but rather whether such exclusion rendered petitioner's trial so fundamentally unfair as to constitute a denial of federal constitutional rights. (internal quotation marks omitted)). We review de novo the district court's determination that an error was harmless. Calvert v. Wilson, 288 F.3d 823, 832-33 (6th Cir.2002). An error is not harmless if it had a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict. Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 637, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). Jordan admits that the testimony about C.A.'s virginity was not relevant to the issues at trial, since his defense theory involved the wholesale denial of any sexual activity rather than a challenge to her lack of consent. A few brief questions about an admittedly collateral topic would not likely have a substantial influence on the jury's verdict. See Jordan v. Hurley, 397 F.3d 360, 364 (6th Cir.2005) (Jordan's inability to impeach the victim did not have a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the verdict); Whiteside, 2003 WL 21360247, at  (The fact that S.W. had no sexual relations with any other person was neither inflammatory nor prejudicial.). Jordan has not presented any argument to the contrary. Moreover, the State had not yet been informed of Jordan's defense theory at the time of C.A.'s direct examination and, according to its counsel's assertions at oral argument, still believed that Jordan might argue that C.A. consented to the sexual activity. In sum, we find no basis to question the resolution of this case by the Ohio courts. The district court therefore did not err in denying Jordan's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.