Opinion ID: 1115282
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction of issues presented

Text: The basic problem with the facts of this case was that within reason, the offense could not have occurred on the date specifically charged of August 12 or even August 5 or August 19, which were variable dates claimed by the alleged victim. Either the occurrence did not happen at all or it happened on some other unrelated date. Initial conviction was obtained by the use of an expert witness who vouched for the credibility of the complainant, cf. Zabel, 765 P.2d 357, and a course of bad acts evidence involving an earlier occurrence with an older daughter for which Brown had previously been subjected to criminal punishment. Brown I, 736 P.2d 1110, Urbigkit, J., dissenting. The major technical problem with the majority is that it does not apply the Opie test at all and, if it had, the trial court decision, biased as it was, would have required reversal. The majority now seeks to append to a recanted testimony test such as Opie a new condition that requires the trial court to find truth in fact in recantation instead of reasonable credibility. The test creates an impossibility unless the trial judge is a mind reader. Obviously, if the trial court was not smart enough to realize that the prior version was possibly in error, it can no easier be provided a new test of assessed validity which in practical effect simply destroys the efficacy of the motion for new trial process where perjured witness testimony is considered. We move from a situation where we had one witness asserting the event actually occurred, an expert witness who just asserted and a number of witnesses who opined to the contrary by specific factual recitation of impossibility. Now we have no witness to say it happened, but this majority seems determined to preserve the conviction. Unfortunately, we are also faced with a documented record where the trial judge had made up his mind before the hearing was held for Brown II. The communicative capacities of the written language to advise or mischaracterize are a miracle to behold. The majority presents this case through the emotionally directed word recanted, where the real inquiry is a simple question of perjury. The more specific question is whether or not an innocent man was incarcerated by perjury of a principal witness. How do you know the question exists? That witness now states that her original testimony was perjured. In restructuring the case, the majority ignores a significant fact and, in the process, the entire thesis upon which the case was originally tried. At the preliminary hearing, the complainant testified that the offense was a specific offense and occurred on a certain date. Finding thereafter that the date could not have been correct because the family was not even in the state, a further date was selected which had more opportunity since it involved a scheduled time when the mother would have been out of the house for some period. Realistically examining the testimony itself, it is clearly apparent that the offense could not have occurred on that date either. If it could not, it did not. The burden of the testimony is absolute in that regard except for one small voice, the complainant. That person who had the last voice now agrees that it did not occur on the date stated. Like Gale, 792 P.2d 570, where a principal witness was in two places at the same time, this event as subjected to evidence of determined guilt did not occur. The majority broadens this case by leaving open an offense that may have occurred at some other time which is not the subject of this prosecution. Obviously, Brown was convicted by bad acts testimony and the wisdom of an expert who devined the credibility of the complainant. For hard evidence of guilt, there was only one witness and now that witness says the facts were not true. I take strenuous issue with the majority in abandoning Opie, 422 P.2d 84, as stringent as it was and inflexible as it has been applied, to now add a further factor to justify affirming when the last available witness no longer supports the verdict and decision. This court is again called to act like a superannuated jury to determine not the fairness and propriety of the vehicle utilized, but rather to make a fact finding decision. In this case, that fact finding is not that the witness probably lied during the original trial, but rather what she says now is true. The falsity of trial testimony is unaddressed and a characterization is applied to what we think of the present recitation. The issue of this case is relatively simple. Does the law have a mechanism so that perjured testimony will not be the vehicle for conviction and incarceration? Is error in the system non-correctable because the system and its participants are unable to admit that a mistake ever occurs? This result was the vice of the use of reputation and bad acts to convict as exasperated by an expert who, in result, testified as to the credibility of a witness. We corrected that error in Zabel, but continue to ignore its participation in Brown. Perjury is a major problem in criminal procedure recantation since testimony originally was either correct or now corrected. One time or another, perjury was committed. The problem of perjury is not new since Sir Walter Raleigh came to know its true content when he was charged, convicted and then hung based on false identification and perjured testimony. Brown got further than Story v. State, 788 P.2d 617 (Wyo.), cert. denied ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 106, 112 L.Ed.2d 76 (1990) in part because of the adamancy of this writer's opinion, although not to succeed, but the fact remains that the right to assess evidence and test empirical validity should remain within the criminal jury and not displaced by trial court or appellate tribunal.