Opinion ID: 1115282
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts and trial events

Text: As chronicled in Brown I, 736 P.2d 1110, there were two daughters  K.B., the oldest, a stepdaughter who had been adopted by Brown, and M.C.X., who was his natural child. The theory of defense in the first case was that after admitting abuse problems with the older child, K.B., and the younger child at an earlier date, the present offense was fabricated by M.C.X. for which prosecution was pursued as revenge and for M.C.X. to escape from the home. The present record contains the juvenile proceedings for both children which commenced in approximately 1984 and moved then to this proceeding by M.C.X. with an allegation about a specific offense. The sexual abuse was alleged to have occurred on Monday, the afternoon of August 12, rather than August 5 as ascribed in testimony at the preliminary hearing. M.C.X.'s third choice was August 19. It was unrealistic, if not impossible, for the charged offense to have occurred during any one of those three times. Nevertheless, Brown, based solely in substance upon the testimony of M.C.X., was convicted in March 1986 and the resulting sentence was affirmed with one special concurrence and two dissents by this court in May 1987. M.C.X. was removed from the family in 1985 and, from a time after the judgment was affirmed until she enlisted in the Navy in 1987, she went from pillar to post in the juvenile domiciliary of almost innumerable placements, including the female juvenile confinement facility in Sheridan, Wyoming. Sometime before a juvenile disposition hearing in May 1988, she had made known that she wanted to recant her trial testimony in stating that it had not been true. At a hearing in May 1988, she specifically repeated that statement directly to the trial judge, the same judge who thereafter determined this motion for a new trial and documented his determined disbelief. Her desire to abjure the stated perjury used for conviction continued with consistency and, following Navy enlistment to get away from the juvenile court placements, she supported her change in testimony by execution of an affidavit asserting she had given false testimony at trial. Supporting the motion for a new trial at the resulting hearing was the expert witness evaluation of Dr. Brian Miracle, a clinical psychologist. M.C.X.'s testimony at the hearing was specific, direct and emphatic and, as in 1986, 1988 and now following the hearing in 1989, unaccepted by the trial court. At the hearing held on June 21 and 22, 1989, the trial court, in a transcript recorded in a twenty-page monologue covering a multitude of subjects, reiterated in essential conclusion what had been said in the closed juvenile proceeding fifteen months earlier. The trial judge did not believe M.C.X. had originally committed perjury, but rather was lying at this later date. Unfortunately, neither Brown nor his counsel were present at the 1988 juvenile disposition hearing to know that the trial judge had already made up his mind regarding the validity of the original testimony before conducting the subsequent hearing on the motion for a new trial. Adding additional substance to the expressed bias of the trial judge was a colloquy that had occurred between himself and an initial juror when, at a time after the original verdict, he comforted the juror by assuring her that Brown was in fact guilty.