Opinion ID: 1461893
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Satisfaction of Right to Confront and Cross-examine the Accuser

Text: The record shows that defendant had the opportunity at trial to confront and cross-examine his accuser on issues that were relevant to the alleged sexual assaults. The defendant's attorney interrogated the victim about the alleged sexual assaults and about events leading up to the assaults during the weeks and months before they occurred. This was the kind of confrontation and cross-examination that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article 1, section 10, of the Rhode Island Constitution both envision and guarantee. See Davis, 415 U.S. at 317-18, 94 S.Ct. at 1111, 39 L.Ed.2d at 354. Although establishing the witness's motives or bias in testifying is also a key part of the constitutionally protected right to cross-examination, Davis, 415 U.S. at 316, 94S.Ct. at 1110, 39 L. Ed. 2d at 353, the evidence offered to prove motivation or bias must be related to the charge the defendant is facing. State v. Botelho, 753 A.2d 343 (R.I.2000). Thus, evidence of a complaining witness's similar accusations of wrongdoing against others may be used to challenge a witness's credibility with respect to the pending charges, regardless of whether those prior accusations ever were proved false. Botelho, 753 A.2d at 346 (citing State v. Izzi, 115 R.I. 487, 490, 348 A.2d 371, 372-73 (1975) and State v. Oliveira, 576 A.2d 111, 113 (R.I.1990)); see also R.I. R. Evid. 404(b). However, accusations that are fundamentally different from the ones in the case at bar cannot be so used. Botelho, 753 A.2d at 347 (refusing to allow cross-examination in a child sexual-abuse case about the minor's accusations of excessive discipline against two other men because those claims were fundamentally different). For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that the excluded evidence concerning the paternity suits was irrelevant to the sexual-assault charges in this case and that the alleged childhood rape was so remote in time, so different in circumstances, and so potentially misleading to the jury that precluding defendant from using it at trial for impeachment purposes did not constitute an abuse of the trial justice's broad discretion in this area.