Opinion ID: 626118
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Waiver of the rape-shield law's protections

Text: Jordan concedes that Ohio's rapeshield law generally prevents him from introducing evidence of C.A.'s sexual history. He instead argues that the State waived the protections of this law and opened the door to cross-examination of any witness about C.A.'s sexual history through its questions about C.A.'s virginity. But Jordan has not proffered any authority supporting this argument and admitted at oral argument that he has no such authority. The question before the Ohio Court of Appeals was whether the State's allegedly improper conduct at trial was sufficient to waive the rape-shield protections and permit the cross-examination of third-party witnesses about C.A.'s sexual history. Our task, however, is not to adjudicate whether the Ohio Court of Appeals reached the correct conclusion concerning Jordan's cross-examination of K.W., but instead to determine whether the state court's decision was contrary to or represented an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. See Lewis, 307 F.3d at 420 (describing the court's function as deciding whether [the exclusion of evidence by the trial judge] rendered petitioner's trial so fundamentally unfair as to constitute a denial of federal constitutional rights). The Ohio Court of Appeals in this case concludedwith little explanationthat the doctrine of waiver does not apply to this situation and instead applied the multi-factored balancing test described above in upholding the trial court's evidentiary ruling. State v. Jordan, No. 06 HA 586, 2007 WL 1880029, at -7 (Ohio Ct.App. June 22, 2007) (unpublished opinion). Jordan has not supplied us with any authority demonstrating that the state court's decision was improper. Because the Supreme Court has not explicitly addressed this issue and because of the broad latitude afforded to trial courts on evidentiary issues, we are not persuaded that the Ohio Court of Appeals' decision on Jordan's waiver argument was either contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law.