Opinion ID: 743074
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Limitation of Victim's Testimony

Text: 30 Agard's first assertion of constitutional error relates to the trial court's limitation of defense counsel's attempt to cross-examine Winder on whether she had ever engaged in anal intercourse with persons other than Agard. At a sidebar, the defense asserted that the testimony was not being sought for promiscuity purposes or anything of that nature. The argument was that the prosecution had attempted to overcome the medical evidence showing no anal trauma, by eliciting on direct examination Winder's testimony that she did not struggle during the incident; this, Agard's counsel asserted, opened the door to sexual history testimony probative of what the medical record ought to reflect. The trial court ruled that the defense's inquiry about prior sexual history was forbidden by the state rules of evidence, and that any probative value was far exceeded by the prejudice. It also rejected the defense's suggestion that the testimony be allowed with a limiting instruction to the jury. 31 Agard claims that the trial court's ruling denied him the ability to present his defense, thereby violating his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to confrontation and to due process. See Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 2146, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986); Williams v. Lord, 996 F.2d 1481, 1483 (2d Cir.1993); Rosario v. Kuhlman, 839 F.2d 918, 924 (2d Cir. 1988). In assessing this claim, we note that a state may restrict a defendant's introduction of evidence without violating the constitutional right to present a defense so long as those restrictions are neither arbitrary [n]or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve. Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 55-56, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 2711, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987). See Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 23, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 1925, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967). 32 Rape shield statutes have been enacted by Congress and the majority of states. Fed.R.Evid. 412; Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 146, 111 S.Ct. 1743, 1744, 114 L.Ed.2d 205 (1991). The New York law relied upon by the trial court bars, as a general rule, the use at trial of evidence of an alleged victim's prior sexual conduct with persons other than the defendant, but grants the court discretion to admit such evidence in the interest of justice. N.Y.Crim. Proc. Law § 60.42 (McKinney 1992). This discretionary power, however, must be exercised within the boundaries of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. 33 Petitioner argues to this court that the questions he intended to ask Winder are not the kind that rape shield statutes such as New York's are intended to prevent. The interrogation of Winder was, he asserts, not an attempt to harass her or soil her name with intrusive questions and innuendo about promiscuity. Nor did he wish to show that she had a propensity to consent to anal intercourse which was demonstrated by her past behavior. In this appeal, he avows that he sought a negative answer to his questions. Supposedly, had Winder answered that she had little or no experience with anal sodomy, her response would have strengthened the importance of the medical evidence showing no anal trauma. Furthermore, he points out that Winder already had admitted to meeting a man at a bar and going home with him to engage in sexual intercourse; that the prosecutor had said to the jury that the complainant was sexually active; and that Winder had testified that she told Agard that she was not into anal intercourse, thereby suggesting she was inexperienced with that activity but doing so without specificity. Petitioner would have us find that, because these details were before the jury, any further testimony about Winder's past could do little additional harm. 34 We disagree with petitioner that his counsel's questioning of Winder was obviously outside the usual application of the rape shield laws. Rape shield laws serve the broad purpose of protecting the victims of rape from harassment and embarrassment in court, and by doing so seek to lessen women's historical unwillingness to report these crimes. Yet they also serve a second purpose: they reinforce the trial judge's traditional power to keep inflammatory and distracting evidence from the jury. See Sandoval v. Acevedo, 996 F.2d 145, 148-49 (7th Cir.1993) (citing Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 111 S.Ct. 1743, 114 L.Ed.2d 205). In this respect, rape shield laws are an example of the court's traditional power to exclude evidence the prejudicial character of which far exceeds probative value. Evidence of past sexual conduct and particularly of, perhaps, more unusual activities such as anal intercourse, is likely to distract a jury from the contemporaneous evidence it is asked to consider. And as for the probative side of the equation, it is far from clear what bearing prior consensual experience with a particular sexual practice has on the probability of trauma occurring during a subsequent non-consensual act. For this reason, we believe that this second purpose of rape shield laws is well-served by excluding defense counsel's proposed questions to Winder. We find that the New York rape shield law is a restriction that both facially and as applied in Agard's case was neither arbitrary nor disproportionate to the purposes [it was] designed to serve, and therefore does not violate any constitutional prohibition. 35 Furthermore, we are not persuaded by Agard's assertion that the other purpose of the rape shield statutes is not at play. His argument is weakened by an inconsistency in his own position: he assertedly expected Winder to answer that she never or only once or twice engaged in this sexual activity. Pet. Br. at 44. But Agard himself testified that he and Winder engaged in anal intercourse on the weekend they met, a statement clearly conflicting with the answer the defense now claims it anticipated. If Winder testified that she had on previous occasions consented to anal intercourse with other partners, her testimony would have been precisely the kind of forbidden sexual propensity evidence supporting Agard's claim that the two had engaged in consensual sodomy on their first night together. While a negative answer could have provided some additional measure of support--however slight--for the defense's argument concerning the medical record, an affirmative answer could also have aided its cause. In light of this wrinkle in petitioner's position, we, like the district court, are skeptical that the defense truly sought the answer never, and that it truly had no intent to embarrass Winder or lessen her credibility with the jury. Regardless of Winder's answer, her testimony would not have altered the ultimate verdict, and it carried a risk of distracting and prejudicing the jury. We therefore agree with the state and district courts that the trial court's ruling on this point was not erroneous.