Opinion ID: 2633776
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Background to and Purpose of Section 18-3-407

Text: The purpose of the rape shield statute has been well detailed by this court over the last thirty years. At common law, a sexual assault witness's sexual history was admissible to undermine the witness's credibility. See People v. McKenna, 196 Colo. 367, 371, 585 P.2d 275, 277 (1978). in a typical sexual assault case where the defendant claimed that the victim consented, evidence that the victim had had sexual relations with another was admissible. Bryant, 94 P.3d at 629; McKenna, 196 Colo. at 371, 585 P.2d at 277. The relevance rationale was that the victim, having consented to sexual relations in the past, was more likely to have consented in the case at issue. Bryant, 94 P.3d at 629; McKenna, 196 Colo. at 371, 585 P.2d at 277. Cross-examination of the witness then often became a probing examination of one's sexual history, even when completely unrelated to the case at hand. McKenna, 196 Colo. at 371, 585 P.2d at 277-78. As a result, the witness, instead of the defendant, was effectivelyand needlessly put on trial. See id. The ramifications of allowing this examination of the witness's sexual history were significant. Sexual assaults are among the most intimate and personally-devastating invasions a person may experience in his or her lifetime[,] . . . typically produc[ing] emotionally-destructive reverberations for the victim and the victim's family long after [their] occurrence. Bryant, 94 P.3d at 629 (footnote omitted). Victims and witnesses, frequently the victim's parents, relatives or close friends, must testify if charges are to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. See id. at 630. For many witnesses, the initial trauma of the event, combined with the likely prospect of having their sexual histories scrutinized in open court, discouraged them from coming forward to press charges. See id. ; McKenna, 196. Colo. at 372, 585 P.2d at 278. The result was abysmally low rates of prosecutions and convictions for sexual assault. See Bryant, 94 P.3d at 630; McKenna, 196 Colo. at 372, 585 P.2d at 278. The rape shield statute was passed in the 1970s when the General Assembly, as part of a national trend, changed the common law understanding of sexual assault as a crime of passion and recognized it as a hostile crime of violence and domination. McKenna, 196 Colo. at 372, 585 P.2d at 278. The statute reflected a pronounced policy shift away from permitting inquisitions of witnesses in sexual assault cases, and toward greater procedural protection for those witnesses to encourage them to come forward and confront defendants in sexual assault cases. Id. Thus, as we explained in McKenna when we first reviewed section 18-3-407: The basic purpose of section 18-3-407, therefore, is one of Public policy: to provide rape and sexual assault victims greater protection from humiliating and embarrassing public fishing expeditions into their past sexual conduct, without a preliminary showing that evidence thus elicited will be relevant to some issue in the pending case. The statute represents one means chosen by the general assembly to overcome the reluctance of victims of sex crimes to report them for prosecution. Thus it reflects a major public policy decision by the general assembly regarding sexual assault cases. In effect the legislature has declared the state's policy to be that victims of sexual assaults should not be subjected to psychological or emotional abuse in court as the price of their cooperation in prosecuting sex offenders. Id. at 371-72, 585 P.2d at 278. This special statutory procedure is a constitutionally upheld mix of the legislature's substantive, power and this court's procedural rulemaking authority. People v. Weiss, 133 P.3d 1180, 1185 (Colo.2006); McKenna, 196 Colo. at 372-73, 585 P.2d at 278-79. It marked a significant change in how Colorado courts analyzed evidence of a witness's sexual history. Generally, the rules of evidence favor admissibility. People v. Melillo, 25 P.3d 769, 773 (Colo.2001). However, the statute reflects the General Assembly's intent to make a substantive change in the law by declaring evidence of a witness's sexual history presumptively irrelevant, and creating the offer-of-proof procedure that must be followed in order to rebut the presumption and to introduce evidence of a witness's sexual history at trial. See Weiss, 133 P.3d at 1185; In re K.N., 977 P.2d 868, 872 (Colo. 1999). Not only does the act require the proponent of such evidence to prove the relevance and materiality of the sexual history evidence before trial, but it also limits the public exposure of the witness. Public examination of the witness about the witness's sexual history may occur only once, that is, at trial, because the pretrial hearing must be held in camera. See § 18-3-407(1) & (2)(c). It is important to recognize that the statute does not preclude the admission of all sexual history evidence at trial. See McKenna, 196 Colo. at 374, 585 P.2d at 279. Such evidence, although embarrassing or humiliating to a testifying witness, may still be admissible. See id. However, the statute is intended to minimize and control the harmful effect of such evidence by requiring that the proponent of the evidence prove its relevancy and materiality through a specific in camera pretrial procedure before the evidence may be introduced at the public trial. See Bryant, 94 P.3d at 631. If the court determines that sexual history evidence may be presented at trial, it must prescribe the nature of the evidence that may be presented and the questions that may be posed. See § 18-3-407(2)(e). The main goal of the statute, then, is to prevent needless, humiliating and embarrassing fishing trips that probe the witness's sexual history in public, when there has been no showing that the evidence is relevant and material to an issue in the case. Its secondary goal is to ensure that when a public examination of a witness's sexual history must occur, it occurs only onceat the trialand the examination is limited to evidence or questions approved by the trial court. Having examined the policy background to the rape shield statute, we next determine if the rape shield was meant to apply in the context of this case.