Opinion ID: 2084944
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Right of Cross-Examination: Sexual Abuse Cases

Text: Nevertheless, we have long applied special evidentiary rules to prior accusations of sexual assault when used to challenge the complaining witness's credibility. See State v. McCarthy, 446 A.2d 1034, 1034-35 (R.I.1982) (reversing trial justice's exclusion of evidence that complaining witness had withdrawn rape charges against a different man). In Oliveira, 576 A.2d at 113, we held that the complaining witness's prior allegations of abuse were admissible even if those prior allegations had not been proven false or withdrawn. We said: We believe that evidence of a complaining witness' prior allegations of sexual assault may be admitted `to challenge effectively the complaining witness's credibility,' even if the allegations were not proven false or withdrawn.    We have often stated that the credibility of a witness is always in issue. The defendant's inability to prove that prior accusations were in fact false does not make the fact that prior accusations were made irrelevant. By not allowing defendant the opportunity to challenge [the witness's] credibility, the trial justice inappropriately infringed on defendant's Sixth Amendment rights of confrontation and effective cross-examination. Id. (requiring cross-examination and admission of DCYF records of alleged victim's prior unproven but never recanted sexual abuse allegations against different men). We have invoked this language in a number of our subsequent opinions. See State v. Dennis, 893 A.2d 250, 266 (R.I.2006) (complainant's prior claim of rape that she previously admitted was a lie was admissible to challenge that witness's credibility); Dorsey, 783 A.2d at 951, 952 (trial justice did not err by excluding evidence of an accusation the victim had made twenty years earlier but restating that 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); State v. Pettiway, 657 A.2d 161, 163 (R.I.1995) (restating Oliveira holding). But see State v. West, 95 Hawai`i 452, 24 P.3d 648, 655 (2001) (nearly every jurisdiction addressing this question has consistently required a preliminary determination of falsity prior to the admission of allegedly false statements of unrelated sexual assaults). Moreover, we indicated in Oliveira that such evidence also may be admitted to demonstrate that the alleged victim had another source of knowledge about the sexual acts described by the victim as having occurred during the assault. Oliveira, 576 A.2d at 113-14 (quoting State v. Jacques, 558 A.2d 706, 708 (Me.1989) (criminal defendants must be permitted to rebut the inference a jury might otherwise draw that the victim was so naive sexually that she could not have fabricated the charge)). In subsequent decisions we have elaborated a more nuanced doctrine concerning cross-examination that has limited the broadest reading of our decision in Oliveira. In State v. Botelho, 753 A.2d 343, 347 (R.I.2000), we held that the trial justice properly precluded cross-examination concerning the witness's prior allegations of sexual abuse against other men when there was insufficient evidence to show the witness had actually alleged the abuse. We noted that the witness vigorously denied making the allegations during voir dire and that defense counsel was unable to produce evidence corroborating that she had actually made the allegation. Id. at 346. Furthermore, in State v. Lynch, 854 A.2d 1022, 1035 (R.I.2004), we stated that evidence of prior accusations of sexual abuse that result in conviction had no relevance with respect to [the witness's] credibility as the conviction conclusively establish[ed] the truthfulness of her accusations. In Pettiway, 657 A.2d at 163-64, we held that the defendant had a constitutional right to cross-examine the complaining witness regarding prior sexual abuse allegations that showed a pattern of accusing her mother's boyfriends. Significantly, we recognized that the United States Supreme Court has particularly emphasized that a cross-examiner should be afforded ample opportunity to develop the issues of bias, prejudice, and motivation properly before the jury and declined to simply rely on Oliveira's general credibility analysis. Id. at 163 (citing Davis, 415 U.S. at 318, 94 S.Ct. 1105). Moreover, a trial justice maintains discretion under Rule 403 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence to preclude cross-examination when its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of confusion of the issues, the possibility of misleading the jury, or is needlessly cumulative. See Lynch, 854 A.2d at 1035-36 (upholding denial of cross-examination regarding prior allegation resulting in conviction where trial justice had allowed cross-examination about two other strikingly similar allegations); Dorsey, 783 A.2d at 953 (Given the dissimilarity of this incident to those at issue during defendant's trial, the trial justice was entitled to consider the jury's potential confusion, the victim's tender age when the charge was made and when the underlying event supposedly occurred and the remoteness in time of this prior charge as weighing against its admission into evidence.).