Opinion ID: 2209739
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 21

Heading: Open Door

Text: Harrold argued at trial, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the prosecution opened the door to admission of the CableVision rules during its cross-examination of Harrold. The critical exchange is as follows: Q. And you wanted your movies shownor your videos shown after midnight because you thought that that might lessen the possibility that children or juveniles would be exposed to it, correct? [Harrold]. I couldn't answer that question `cause I can'tI can't tell who's gonna be watching what. Q. You just asked to have it run after midnight because you like having it run after midnight, no other reason? After that question, defense counsel objected and argued that the door had been opened to the introduction of the CableVision rules. Defense counsel argued that the answer to the prosecutor's question was that Harrold had asked to have the videos run after midnight because CableVision rules required indecent materials to show after midnight and that Harrold should be able to answer the question using CableVision rules. Ultimately, the last question was withdrawn, and the trial court reaffirmed its earlier ruling excluding the CableVision rules. The doctrine of opening the door, while recognized, has not previously been examined in depth by this court. In other jurisdictions, it has been said that the doctrine is a rule of expanded relevancy which authorizes admitting evidence which otherwise would have been irrelevant, in order to respond to (1) admissible evidence which generates an issue or (2) inadmissible evidence admitted by the court over objection. Clark v. State, 332 Md. 77, 629 A.2d 1239 (1993). The rule is most often applied to situations where evidence adduced or comments made by one party make otherwise irrelevant evidence highly relevant or require some response or rebuttal. See Pool v. Superior Court, 139 Ariz. 98, 677 P.2d 261 (1984). As the Maryland Court of Appeals stated: Generally, opening the door is simply a contention that competent evidence which was previously irrelevant is now relevant through the opponent's admission of other evidence on the same issue. . . . . In sum, opening the door is simply a way of saying: My opponent has injected an issue into the case, and I ought to be able to introduce evidence on that issue. Clark v. State, 332 Md. at 85, 629 A.2d at 1243. We find this analysis helpful to our determination. It seems obvious that one does not open the door to admit evidence that is inadmissible; instead, the door is opened when evidence that had previously been inadmissible then becomes admissible by virtue of some act of counsel or the parties. Compare State v. Coffman, 227 Neb. 149, 416 N.W.2d 243 (1987) (admission of improper evidence on one side provides no justification for other party to introduce incompetent or improper evidence in rebuttal). With this in mind, we consider the effect of the question posed by the prosecution in the instant case. We have already determined that the CableVision rules were not relevant to the issue of community standards because they contained no information that would be helpful to the jury in that regard. This fact was in no way altered by the question posed to Harrold by the prosecution. Even after the question was asked, the CableVision rules were still irrelevant to the issue of community standards. Neither did the question inject some new issue into the case to which the rules would be relevant. To the extent that the rules were relevant to Harrold's intent to produce and distribute obscene material, their exclusion was harmless, as noted above, and this is true regardless of the question posed to Harrold on cross-examination. In sum, while the prosecutor's cross-examination questions might have implicated the existence of the CableVision rules, the rules were not themselves evidence and the questions did not have the effect of causing the previously irrelevant CableVision rules to become relevant to any issue in the case. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in continuing to exclude them.