Opinion ID: 626118
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Whether Jordan should have been able to impeach C.A. with K.W.'s testimony

Text: 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 June 22, 2007) (unpublished opinion).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.