Opinion ID: 775767
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ken Harris's Testimony

Text: 51 The Vermont Supreme Court found that the exclusion of the Harris testimony did not violate Fuller's rights under the Confrontation Clause, and therefore did not reach the question of harmless error. 1 After carefully considering the entire record, we cannot find an unreasonable application of clearly established law. The Vermont Supreme Court held: 52 Ms. Fuller's doubts as to whether the sexual assault occurred, offered through the testimony of a third person, is not the type of evidence normally admitted for impeachment purposes. Her alleged statement [to Harris] was not an assertion of an opinion on S.E.'s character for truthfulness. The statement offered through Mr. Harris is hearsay and only relevant if offered for the truth of the matter asserted. Therefore, the court did not err in excluding the inadmissible impeachment evidence. 53 Fuller, 721 A.2d at 483 (citations omitted). 54 At oral argument on appeal, Fuller suggested an alternative theory of relevance not advanced in the trial court: The exclusion of Ken Harris's testimony violated the Confrontation Clause because Fuller could have offered it for the purpose of impeaching Ms. Fuller's statements regarding his confession to undermine confidence in whether the admission had taken place. 55 Fuller never advanced this theory of relevance before the trial court. In a brief colloquy concerning Ms. Fuller's statements to Harris, the prosecution briefly alluded to this theory: 56 Now, I suppose,... in connection with her statement that Ken Fuller told her that- admitted to it at the time and she gave that statement to the police, that Counsel could say, Well, you wouldn't have said this if he had admitted it to you. 57 But even after the prosecutor mentioned this possible theory, defense counsel continued to rely on other theories of relevance that the trial court found invalid: to impeach Ms. Fuller's credibility regarding her statements to the police, and indirectly to impeach S.E.'s credibility by showing that Ms. Fuller did not believe S.E. 58 These were not valid reasons. Ms. Fuller had no personal knowledge whether Fuller did what he was accused of. She gave no directly inculpatory testimony that would be contradicted or impeached by her statement to Harris that she did not believe the sexual assault had taken place. As to all the reasons Fuller advanced to the trial judge in support of the receipt of the statement to Harris, the statement was of no probative or impeachment value as the Vermont Supreme Court held. 59 Because at trial Fuller's attorney supported the relevance of this evidence on several other grounds and not on the theory he now advances, we cannot find that the trial judge made an unreasonable application of the Confrontation Clause in failing to guess a theory of relevance that was not argued. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409, 413 (2000). 60 Nor did the Vermont Supreme Court unreasonably apply the Confrontation Clause. The question before the Vermont Supreme Court was not whether the statement to Harris was a proper subject of cross- examination, but whether the trial judge violated the Confrontation Clause in declining to allow the cross. Because this theory of relevance was not argued to the trial judge, the Vermont Supreme Court's conclusion that there was no violation of the Confrontation Clause was likewise not an unreasonable application of the Constitution. 61 We have considered all remaining arguments and find them to be without merit.