Opinion ID: 2538692
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Silence as Impeachment Evidence

Text: Additionally, we reject the People's argument that evidence of the defendant's silence was properly admitted, not as substantive rebuttal evidence of the defendant's sanity, but solely for the purpose of impeaching her later statements to mental health experts that she could not recall the shooting. In doing so, we examine the nature and purpose of impeachment evidence generally and then compare that with how the evidence was actually admitted below. The very essence of impeachment evidence is that it tends to cast doubt upon the credibility of a testifying witness. Indeed, [t]he sine qua non of impeaching a witness' testimony is that the evidence contradicts his previous statements. LeMasters v. People, 678 P.2d 538, 543 (Colo.1984). Additionally, our rules of evidence provide that [w]hen a hearsay statement ... has been admitted in evidence, the credibility of the declarant may be attacked, and if attacked may be supported, by any evidence which would be admissible for those purposes if declarant had testified as a witness. CRE 806. In other words, where a defense witness testifies regarding a defendant's out-of-court statements, the prosecution may attack the credibility of the defendant by introducing testimony regarding other out-of-court statements which are inconsistent with those provided by the defense witness. Here, mental health experts testified regarding the defendant's statements that she did not remember the actual shooting. Thus, according to the People, they may attack the defendant's credibility and impeach those statements using testimony regarding her silence on the night of the killing. The People's reliance on CRE 806, however, fails for several reasons. First, at no point in the evidentiary hearings did the prosecution argue that its sole purpose in introducing the defendant's non-responsiveness was to impeach her later statements to the mental health experts who examined her. Rather, the prosecution argued that the defendant's non-responsiveness was very good evidence she knew right from wrong, and therefore established that she was legally sane at the time of the shooting. Moreover, the prosecution in no way limited its use of the evidence to impeachment, but instead cited the defendant's silence in its opening and closing statements, and examined six witnesses regarding the defendant's silence during its case-in-chief. The prosecution did not wait until testimony regarding the defendant's claimed inability to recall the event was introduced into evidence before seeking to impeach that testimony with the defendant's silence. Rather, the prosecution relied upon that evidence from the outset, all for the express purpose of proving that the defendant was legally sane when she shot Mileski. Finally, the People's impeachment argument fails because, regardless of whether the prosecution was impeaching the testifying witness or the hearsay declarant, such evidence must actually contradict the impeachable statement. Unlike those cases where a defendant's insanity defense has been impeached by proof of her prior inconsistent statements, the defendant's non-responsiveness does not contradict her later statements that she did not recall the shooting. For example, a District of Columbia appellate court upheld the admissibility of the defendant's statements to the police the day after a murder. Wilkes v. United States, 631 A.2d 880 (D.C.App.1993). In that case, the defendant had told the police that he did it, although he failed to specify what it was, and later described how he had disposed of the gun. Id. at 882. The court ruled that such statements were admissible for either impeachment or rebuttal purposes because they directly contradict[ed] his later statements to psychiatrists that he did not recall the murder. Id. at 889. Similarly, the West Virginia Supreme Court upheld the admissibility of the defendant's otherwise inadmissible but voluntary statements to police that they must have talked to mama. State v. DeGraw, 196 W.Va. 261, 470 S.E.2d 215, 221 (1996). There, the defendant's mother testified that the defendant had told her that he had killed the victim shortly after the murder. Id. at 218. Once again, the court ruled that such statements could be used to counter a diminished capacity defense based on lack of memory because the defendant had directly acknowledged his culpability, and the statements demonstrated that the defendant did indeed have some memory as to the events surrounding the crime charged. Id. at 224. Unlike the defendants in Wilkes and DeGraw, however, the defendant in this case never made any inculpatory statements to law enforcement personnel, nor did she say anything which can be described as inconsistent with having no memory of the shooting. Rather, she simply did not answer any questions regarding what took place at the apartment. Here, there is no direct contradiction between the defendant's silence after the crime and her later statements that she did not recall the shooting. We reject the People's argument that the evidence of the defendant's silence was properly admitted for impeachment purposes. Instead, we find not only that the use of the testimony regarding her silence was not confined to impeachment in its presentation, but also that even if it had been so limited, it would not have been sufficiently contradictory to constitute impeachment of her statements that she could not remember the shooting.