Opinion ID: 163124
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Constitutional Right to Present a Defense

Text: 139 We take our principal guidance from the Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998), which affirmed a military court's exclusion of polygraph evidence in a court martial. Before turning to Scheffer, however, we review three earlier Supreme Court decisions distinguished by Scheffer. Comparing these decisions to Scheffer is instructive. 140 The first of the three cases is Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967). In Washington a defendant on trial for murder wished to call a witness who would have testified that he, not the defendant, had killed the victim. Id. at 16, 87 S.Ct. 1920. But because the witness had already been convicted in connection with the murder, the trial judge ruled his testimony inadmissible under a Texas statute that prohibited people charged as coparticipants in the same crime from testifying on each other's behalf. Id. at 16-17, 87 S.Ct. 1920. 141 The Supreme Court held that the disqualification of the witness violated the defendant's constitutional right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses. Id. at 18, 87 S.Ct. 1920. The Court wrote: 142 The right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense, the right to present the defendant's version of the facts as well as the prosecution's to the jury so it may decide where the truth lies. 143 Id. at 19, 87 S.Ct. 1920 (emphasis added). Pointing out that the Sixth Amendment was designed in part to make the testimony of a defendant's witnesses admissible on his behalf in court, id. at 22, 87 S.Ct. 1920, the Court explained that the Sixth Amendment bars arbitrary rules that prevent whole categories of defense witnesses from testifying on the basis of a priori categories that presume them unworthy of belief. Id. 144 In Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), a defendant charged with murder attempted to show at trial that another man, McDonald, was the guilty party. Two evidentiary rulings prevented the defendant from fully developing this theory. First, the trial court held that Mississippi's voucher rule barred the defendant from cross-examining and impeaching McDonald, whom he had called as a witness. Id. at 295, 93 S.Ct. 1038. Second, the trial court excluded the testimony of three of McDonald's friends, to whom McDonald had confessed to the killing, on the ground that the testimony was hearsay. Id. at 298, 93 S.Ct. 1038. 145 The Supreme Court held that, taken together, the trial court's rulings denied [the defendant] a trial in accord with traditional and fundamental standards of due process. Id. at 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038. With regard to the application of the common-law voucher rule, the Court asserted that [t]he availability of the right to confront and to cross-examine those who give damaging testimony against the accused is so important that it should not be interpreted as hinging on the technicality of which party called the witness. Id. at 297-98, 93 S.Ct. 1038. As for the application of the hearsay rule, the Court wrote: 146 The testimony rejected by the trial court here bore persuasive assurances of trustworthiness and thus was well within the basic rationale of the exception for declarations against interest. That testimony also was critical to Chambers' defense. In these circumstances, where constitutional rights directly affecting the ascertainment of guilt are implicated, the hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice. 147 Id. at 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038. 148 The third decision, Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 49, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987), concerned the application of a rule barring hypnotically refreshed testimony. The defendant, charged with manslaughter following her husband's death from gunshot wounds, recalled certain exculpatory details about the shooting only after being hypnotized. The trial court limited the defendant's testimony to those facts that she remembered prior to hypnosis, id. at 47-48, 107 S.Ct. 2704, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed this decision, announcing a per se rule excluding hypnotically refreshed testimony. Id. at 48-49, 107 S.Ct. 2704. 149 Reviewing the Arkansas rule, the Supreme Court emphasized that while the right to present relevant testimony is not without limitation, a state's restrictions of a defendant's right to testify may not be arbitrary or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve. Id. at 55-56, 107 S.Ct. 2704. The Court concluded that Arkansas had not shown that hypnotically enhanced testimony is always so untrustworthy and so immune to the traditional means of evaluating credibility that it should disable a defendant from presenting her version of the events for which she is on trial. Id. at 61, 107 S.Ct. 2704. 150 The Court's recent decision in Scheffer differed from the preceding three cases in that it affirmed the exclusion of the disputed evidence. Of particular interest to our analysis, Scheffer was the first of this line of cases to address opinion evidence, rather than factual testimony. Scheffer held that the exclusion of polygraph evidence did not violate the accused's constitutional right to present a defense. The accused, an Air Force airman facing drug charges, maintained at his court-martial that he had not knowingly consumed any drugs. 523 U.S. at 306, 118 S.Ct. 1261. He sought to introduce evidence of a polygraph test that supported his contention, but the trial judge excluded the evidence under Military Rule of Evidence 707, which prohibits the introduction of polygraph results. Id. at 306-07, 118 S.Ct. 1261. 151 The Supreme Court began its discussion by noting that [a] defendant's right to present relevant evidence is not unlimited, but rather is subject to reasonable restrictions. Id. at 308, 118 S.Ct. 1261. A rule is suspect only if it is `arbitrary' or `disproportionate to the purposes [it is] designed to serve' and exclusion of evidence is unconstitutionally arbitrary or disproportionate only where it ... infringe[s] upon a weighty interest of the accused. Id. ( quoting Rock, 483 U.S. at 56, 107 S.Ct. 2704). 152 The Court held that excluding polygraph evidence is a rational and proportional means of advancing the legitimate interest in barring unreliable evidence. Id. at 312, 118 S.Ct. 1261. In addition, Rock, Washington, and Chambers were distinguishable in that the [t]he exclusions of evidence ... declared unconstitutional in those cases significantly undermined fundamental elements of the defendant's defense. Id. at 315, 118 S.Ct. 1261. In Washington, the Court noted, `the State arbitrarily denied [the defendant] the right to put on the stand a witness who was physically and mentally capable of testifying to events that he had personally observed.' Id. at 316, 118 S.Ct. 1261 ( quoting Washington, 388 U.S. at 23, 87 S.Ct. 1920). In Rock, the rule [barring hypnotically refreshed recollection] deprived the jury of the testimony of the only witness who was at the scene and had firsthand knowledge of the facts and also infringed upon the particularly significant interest of the defendant in testifying in her own defense. Id. at 315, 118 S.Ct. 1261. As for Chambers, its holding was confined to the specific `facts and circumstances' presented in that case. Id. at 316, 93 S.Ct. 1038 ( quoting Chambers, 410 U.S. at 303, 93 S.Ct. 1038). 153 In contrast, said Scheffer, Rule 707 does not implicate any significant interest of the accused. Id. at 316-17, 118 S.Ct. 1261. At the court-martial, the court members heard all the relevant details of the charged offense from the perspective of the accused. Id. at 317, 118 S.Ct. 1261. The rule excluding polygraph evidence did not keep the defendant from introducing any factual evidence, but prevented him only from introducing expert opinion testimony to bolster his own credibility. Id.