Opinion ID: 2232847
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of the Victim's Past Sexual Conduct

Text: The trial court also properly excluded the friend's testimony that on prior occasions the victim had committed acts of prostitution in exchange for money or cocaine. Williams claims this testimony supports his defense that the victim consented and accompanied the men because they had promised to obtain drugs for her. The trial court excluded the friend's testimony regarding the victim's prior alleged acts of prostitution because evidence of a victim's past sexual conduct is not admissible except as provided in Indiana's Rape Shield Rule, Indiana Evidence Rule 412. [6] Rule 412 provides that in prosecutions for a sex crime, evidence of a victim's or witness' past sexual conduct is inadmissible, except in the following circumstances: 1) evidence of the victim's or witness' past sexual conduct with the defendant; 2) evidence that shows that some person other than the defendant committed the act upon which the prosecution is founded; 3) evidence that the victim's pregnancy at the time of trial was not caused by the defendant; or 4) evidence of a conviction for a crime offered for impeachment under Rule 609. Otherwise stated, past incidents of consent, except in these limited circumstances, are not permitted to imply consent on the date in question. None of the exceptions to Rule 412's general prohibition of inquiry into the victim's sexual history apply here. The evidence offered here was of the classic sort precluded by the Rape Shield Rule: purported incidents with other men at other times offered simply to show that the victim had consented in the past in the hope the inference will be drawn that she consented here. Rule 412 was enacted to prevent just this kind of generalized inquiry into the reputation or past sexual conduct of the victim in order to avoid embarrassing the victim and subjecting the victim to possible public denigration. Stephens v. Miller, 13 F.3d 998, 1002 (7th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 808, 115 S.Ct. 57, 130 L.Ed.2d 15. The Rule reflects a policy first embodied in Indiana's Rape Shield Act, Indiana Code § 35-37-4-4, that inquiry into a victim's prior sexual activity is sufficiently problematic that it should not be permitted to become a focus of the defense. Rule 412 is intended to prevent the victim from being put on trial, to protect the victim against surprise, harassment, and unnecessary invasion of privacy, and, importantly, to remove obstacles to reporting sex crimes. See id. Balanced against these considerations is the defendant's right to present relevant evidence. For this reason, Rule 412 permits evidence of the defendant's past experience with the victim, but does not permit a defendant to base his defense of consent on the victim's past sexual experiences with third persons. The allegation of prostitution does not affect this calculus. We agree with the Fourth Circuit's view that it is intolerable to suggest that because the victim is a prostitute, she automatically is assumed to have consented with anyone at any time. United States v. Saunders, 943 F.2d 388, 392 (4th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1105, 112 S.Ct. 1199, 117 L.Ed.2d 439 (1992). Moreover, even when evidence does fall within one of Rule 412's exceptions and is admissible, it is still subject to Evidence Rules 401 and 403. In this case, the evidence would shift the jury's attention away from the defendants' actions to the past acts of the victim. Any probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Evid.R. 403. Thus, the trial court properly excluded the evidence. Williams contends that the trial court's application of Indiana's Rape Shield Rule violates his Sixth Amendment right to present witnesses. [7] Indiana's Rape Shield Rule has repeatedly been held facially constitutional. Moore v. Duckworth, 687 F.2d 1063, 1067 (7th Cir.1982). However, the constitutionality of such a law as applied to preclude particular exculpatory evidence remains subject to examination on a case by case basis. Tague v. Richards, 3 F.3d 1133, 1137 (7th Cir.1993) (citation omitted). Many jurisdictions acknowledge that a rape shield statute or rule serves to emphasize the general irrelevance of a victim's sexual history. State v. Crims, 540 N.W.2d 860, 865-69 (Minn.App.1995), rev. denied (1996) (citing cases). [8] Although there are instances where the application of the Rape Shield Rule may violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right, this is not one of them. For example, admission of such evidence may be constitutionally required where the evidence is offered not to show the victim's consent but to establish some other point such as that an injury could have been inflicted by someone other than the defendant. See Tague, 3 F.3d at 1136-38. It may also be required when the trial court restricts a defendant from giving his own account of the events at issue. Cf. Stephens, 13 F.3d at 1017 (Coffey, J., dissenting). And the Sixth Amendment may be implicated when a defendant establishes that the victim engaged in a similar pattern of sexual acts. Cf. Jeffries v. Nix, 912 F.2d 982, 987-88 (8th Cir.1990) (essentially finding a victim's sexual history irrelevant in the absence of compelling evidence of modus operandi); People v. Sandoval, 135 Ill.2d 159, 142 Ill.Dec. 135, 147, 552 N.E.2d 726, 738 (1990) (prior pattern exception applies to the admission of certain evidence which reveals activity marked by characteristics tending to show an individual's unique signature). In this case, there was no restriction on the ability of the defense to present evidence of the incident. The trial court allowed both defendants to testify that the victim agreed to perform sex acts in exchange for money. The jury was informed through testimony of the defendants and the victim that the victim voluntarily entered a car with two strange men at 2 a.m. in the parking lot of a topless club. Whatever her initial motive, at some point, according to her, she clearly communicated her lack of consent to proceeding as the men directed. Whatever her sexual past, if the jury accepted that story, conviction was proper. As noted above, the excluded evidence did not serve to explain any physical evidence. Under these facts, exclusion of the victim's past sexual experiences with third persons is not unconstitutional. See Stephens, 13 F.3d at 1002 (Indiana's Rape Shield Statute could constitutionally preclude a defendant from making a generalized inquiry into the reputation or past sexual conduct of the victim in order to avoid embarrassing her and subjecting her to possible public denigration); Lewis v. State, 451 N.E.2d 50, 53 (Ind.1983) (defendant's right to confrontation was not violated when Indiana's Rape Shield Act was applied to prevent general inquiry into the victim's sexual conduct). We do not agree that an alleged prostitute's prior sexual history becomes fair game simply by reason of her prior actions, or that there is any constitutional right to present evidence of past consensual sex with other persons for that reason alone. [9] Accordingly, Williams' constitutional right to present witnesses was not violated. [10] The Court of Appeals reversed Williams' convictions because the majority concluded that evidence of the victim's cocaine addiction was admissible as a pertinent character trait of the victim offered by the accused under Indiana Evidence Rule 404(a)(2). Williams, 669 N.E.2d at 181-82. The court held that evidence of the victim's severe (and obviously expensive) addiction to smoking cocaine is relevant to and extremely probative of Williams' consent defense that the victim agreed to have sex with the men in exchange for cocaine or money. Id. at 182. However Williams' consent defense does not ultimately turn on the victim's drug use. The evidence of the victim's prior drug use is relevant only to the extent it is offered to show the reason for her past sexual conduct. Money for drugs is one motivation to consent to sex. There are plenty of others. The reasoning of the Court of Appeals would permit evidence of the victim's past sexual conduct to support the theory that the victim consented to the sex acts on the night in question for the same reason as she had allegedly consented in the past. Similar reasoning would subject any complaining victim with an allegedly promiscuous past to unfettered examination of sexual history. That is precisely what Evidence Rule 412 prevents. Where a specific rule Evidence Rule 412makes the past sexual conduct of a victim or witness inadmissible, except under specified circumstances, [11] a party cannot circumvent the requirements of Rule 412(b) by relying on the general doctrines of Rule 404(b). We conclude that the trial court properly excluded evidence of the victim's prior drug history and past sexual conduct pursuant to Indiana's Evidence Rules.