Opinion ID: 2567159
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Whether Jensen was Denied His Sixth Amendment Right to Confront a Witness Against Him

Text: [¶ 7] In June of 2001, Jensen and Spears consented to a guardianship of S.O. with Sheri Gengozian, Jensen's mother. Gengozian was the primary caretaker of S.O. until January of 2003, when she returned physical custody to Spears. [2] After Jensen was charged in this case, Spears and Gengozian continued to maintain a relationship concerning S.O. On August 29, 2003, Spears and Gengozian had a falling out. As a result, Gengozian, with guardianship papers in hand, appeared at Spears' apartment with law enforcement to take custody of S.O. On October 6, 2003, Spears filed a petition with the district court for custody of S.O. and to terminate Gengozian's guardianship. During this period, Gengozian allowed Spears to have custody of S.O. at various times, finally returning him to Spears on a permanent basis sometime around November 3, 2003. By court order, Spears was awarded temporary custody on November 6. [¶ 8] Spears' petition to terminate Gengozian's guardianship was pending when the charges against Jensen proceeded to trial. On the first day of trial, Jensen sought to question Spears in cross-examination regarding her petition. The State objected on relevancy grounds. The district court concurred and prohibited Jensen's line of questioning. [¶ 9] On the day before Jensen was to be sentenced, this Court issued a decision in Hannon v. State, 2004 WY 8, 84 P.3d 320 (Wyo.2004) wherein a conviction was reversed because the trial court denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness against him by restricting his ability to cross-examine the State's material witness regarding a possible motive to lie in his testimony. On its own motion, the district court scheduled a hearing to determine if a new trial was appropriate given the Hannon decision and the court's trial ruling prohibiting Jensen from inquiring into the petition to terminate Gengozian's guardianship. At the hearing, the State presented argument and the testimony of Spears while Jensen did likewise along with testimony from Gengozian. The district court concluded that Jensen was not entitled to a new trial because the limitations imposed on Jensen's cross-examination of Spears were proper on relevancy grounds. [¶ 10] On appeal, Jensen maintains that the court's limitation was improper under our decision in Hannon. He contends that the evidence relating to Spears' petition was relevant to her motives. He argues that the only direct evidence of the alleged assaults was Spears' testimony and, therefore, the jury should have been allowed to judge Spears' possible motives in light of the fact that their child was the subject of a custody dispute with Jensen's mother. [¶ 11] Hannon was convicted of two counts each of second- and third-degree sexual assault and one count of attempted third-degree sexual assault. Hannon, ¶¶4 and 10. On appeal, he challenged an order of the trial court that prohibited him from cross-examining the minor victim about the fact that he did not report the alleged sexual assaults by Hannon until three months after the alleged incident, when the victim was brought in for questioning about his own alleged sexual improprieties with another boy. Id. at ¶ 14. Hannon argued that he had a right grounded in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to cross-examine the victim concerning the allegations against him in order to show that he had a motivation to lie about the alleged assault by Hannon in order to shift blame from his own conduct. Id. We agreed with Hannon. We cited Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974) for the proposition that: Cross-examination is the principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested. Subject always to the broad discretion of a trial judge to preclude repetitive and unduly harassing interrogation, the cross-examiner is not only permitted to delve into the witness' story to test the witness' perceptions and memory, but the cross-examiner has traditionally been allowed to impeach, i.e., discredit, the witness.    A more particular attack on the witness' credibility is [a]ffected by means of cross-examination directed toward revealing possible biases, prejudices, or ulterior motives of the witness as they may relate directly to issues or personalities in the case at hand. The partiality of a witness is subject to exploration at trial, and is always relevant as discrediting the witness and affecting the weight of his testimony. 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 940, p. 775 (Chadbourn rev.1970). We have recognized that the exposure of a witness' motivation in testifying is a proper and important function of the constitutionally protected right of cross-examination. Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 496, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377 (1959). Hannon, ¶ 16 (quoting Davis, 415 U.S. at 317-18, 94 S.Ct. 1105). A consequence of Davis is that a criminal defendant states a violation of the Confrontation Clause by showing that he was prohibited from engaging in otherwise appropriate cross-examination designed to show a prototypical form of bias on the part of the witness, and thereby `to expose to the jury the facts from which jurors ... could appropriately draw inferences relating to the reliability of the witness.' Hannon, ¶ 18 (quoting Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 680, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986)). Under the circumstances of the case, we concluded that Hannon was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation when he was denied the opportunity to fully explore the victim's credibility through an inquiry into his potential motivations for making the accusations against Hannon since the prohibited cross-examination was sufficiently probative of a possible ulterior motive to warrant allowing it. Hannon, ¶ 24. [¶ 12] A defendant's right to cross-examine a witness, however, is not unfettered. The right is subject to the trial court's discretion to reasonably limit cross-examination to prevent, among other things, questioning that is repetitive or of marginal relevance. Hannon, ¶ 22 (quoting United States v. DeSoto, 950 F.2d 626, 629-30 (10th Cir.1991)); see also Olden v. Kentucky, 488 U.S. 227, 232, 109 S.Ct. 480, 102 L.Ed.2d 513 (1988). While questions directed at revealing witness bias are an appropriate and admissible basis of impeachment, the questions asked during cross-examination must be relevant in terms of showing the witness' possible bias against the defendant. DeSoto, at Id. [¶ 13] Here, Jensen claims that the inquiry into the guardianship proceedings would have shown that Spears had a possible ulterior motive for fabricating charges against him. We fail to perceive the relevance of Jensen's line of inquiry. While the events leading to the guardianship proceedings occurred before trial, they took place after the events that formed the basis for the charges against Jensen. If Spears' testimony at trial had been inconsistent with the statements she gave to the police, then an inquiry into the guardianship proceedings may have been probative of Spears' motivations. However, the record shows that Spears' testimony at trial was entirely consistent with the statements she made to the police the night of the incident. Jensen made no effort, at the trial court or on appeal, to demonstrate how, given that timeline, the guardianship proceedings could have had any relation to Spears' trial testimony. As the proponent, it was Jensen's burden to demonstrate relevance, and he failed to do so. Unlike the case in Hannon, here we cannot conclude that the prohibited cross-examination was sufficiently probative of a possible ulterior motive to warrant allowing it. Therefore, we must conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion.