Opinion ID: 1925493
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admission of Testimony Regarding Intoxication

Text: [T]he purpose of rebuttal testimony is to explain, repel, counteract, or disprove the adverse party's evidence. State v. Perez, 882 A.2d 574, 586 n. 20 (R.I.2005). This Court adheres to the principle that a decision to permit rebuttal testimony lies within the discretion of the trial justice and will not be overturned absent an abuse of that discretion. Id.; see also State v. Stewart, 663 A.2d 912, 927 (R.I.1995); State v. Simpson, 520 A.2d 1281, 1284 (R.I.1987). However, the prosecution may not manufacture an issue in the course of cross-examination for the purpose of impeaching the credibility of defendant by the use of evidence or testimony that would otherwise be inadmissible. State v. O'Dell, 576 A.2d 425, 429 (R.I.1990). We later held that a defendant who presented a defense of diminished capacity could be faced with testimony on rebuttal that otherwise would be inadmissible as a prior bad act; the issue in that case was not invented by the prosecution or manufactured in the course of cross-examination as it had been in O'Dell. State v. Edwards, 810 A.2d 226, 242 (R.I.2002). We previously have said that cross-examination, while generally limited to the scope of the direct examination, permissibly may consist of questions    designed to test the witness's accuracy, memory, veracity, credibility or bias. State v. Gordon, 880 A.2d 825, 838 (R.I.2005). Indeed, this principle is particularly compelling in a case in which the defendant has chosen to testify in his or her defense, id., as defendant did in this case. As a witness in his own defense, defendant was subject to `a searching cross-examination to rebut not only the facts stated but also the inferences and conclusions that might be drawn from such testimony. ' State v. Mattatall, 603 A.2d 1098, 1111 (R.I.1992) (emphasis added). O'Dell involved the use of rebuttal evidence that otherwise was inadmissible based on a discovery violation, O'Dell, 576 A.2d at 429, while this case involves testimony that the trial justice ruled to be excluded unless defendant himself opened the door. The state argues that the present case does not fit into the O'Dell framework, but rather into the mold of State v. Sanders, 609 A.2d 963 (R.I.1992). In Sanders, we held that the admission of otherwise inadmissible testimony on rebuttal was proper to rebut testimony given by defendant on direct examination. Id. at 965. The present case involves the use of previously inadmissible testimony to rebut testimony given on cross-examination, but it still does not fit the O'Dell proscription. The inadmissible evidence at issue in O'Dell resulted from a discovery violation. [1] In the case at bar, the evidence regarding defendant's potentially inebriated appearance was instead conditionally excluded upon motion by defendant, at which point the trial justice, as the record clearly demonstrates, left ample room for the excluded evidence to come in on rebuttal, stating prior to trial that if the defendant takes the stand, depending on what he testifies to, he may very well open the door to those other matters coming in[to] evidence as rebuttal. In O'Dell, we specified: We recognize that evidence that may not be admissible in the prosecution's case in chief may be used in rebuttal in order to counter false statements made by the accused in the course of his direct testimony. Such a doctrine has been applied in the prosecution's utilization of illegally obtained evidence in rebuttal. Walder v. United States, [347 U.S. 62, 74 S.Ct. 354, 98 L.Ed. 503 (1954)]. The use of such rebuttal evidence, however, has been limited by the Supreme Court of the United States to situations wherein the defendant has made a false statement in his direct testimony that can be exposed as untrue by the use of the illegally obtained evidence. Therefore, such illegally obtained evidence may not be used in order to contradict defendant's testimony on an issue raised by the prosecution. Agnello v. United States, [269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925)]. In sum the prosecution may not manufacture an issue in the course of cross-examination for the purpose of impeaching the credibility of defendant by the use of evidence or testimony that would otherwise be inadmissible. O'Dell, 576 A.2d at 429 (emphases added). The issue here  the gaps in defendant's story as presented on his direct examination, and the reasons for his lack of memory and denial on both direct and cross-examination  was not raised by the prosecution. Raised by the prosecution, as defined by O'Dell, does not apply every time the state asks a question of a criminal defendant. Rather, O'Dell controls when the prosecution manufacture[s] an issue. Here, the state did not manufacture an issue, but rather questioned defendant in order to convince the jury of the incredible nature of the fragmented chronology defendant presented on direct examination. Once defendant filled in those pieces on cross-examination, he opened the door to rebuttal of those statements. The jury was then entitled to hear that, notwithstanding defendant's purported three-hour walk through the streets of West Warwick, he exhibited clear signs of intoxication at the end of those three hours. O'Dell clearly contemplates the admission of illegally obtained evidence in rebuttal, not evidence previously excluded based on an analysis pursuant to Rule 403 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence. The holdings of O'Dell, while strict, still are relatively narrow. A defendant may not hide behind O'Dell by taking the stand in his own defense, presenting a defense on direct examination, and then protesting the state's zealous cross-examination on the same set of facts, followed by the presentation of a previously discussed rebuttal witness whose testimony, though potentially prejudicial, is also highly relevant. A trial is a search for the truth. It is not a game of chess in which a defendant who obtains a favorable ruling on a motion in limine may be permitted, upon taking the stand in his own defense, to present only portions of the tale and cry O'Dell when the state challenges his incomplete recollections. To apply O'Dell in this scenario is to permit a defendant to engage in strategically narrow testimony on direct examination such that the state is crippled in making its case, prevented from exercising its right to rigorously cross-examine a defendant who chooses to testify. Our holding in O'Dell does not apply universally, and it does not apply here. An O'Dell analysis involves looking at the testimony in question to see whether the witness opened the door or, instead, whether the testimony to be rebutted was manufactured by opposing counsel. O'Dell, 576 A.2d at 429. In the case at bar, on direct examination, defendant did not testify to any alcohol consumption or, in fact, to any details of his snack stop or his after-work activities. Rather, he left wide open gaps in the evening's chronology. It was these gaps that permitted the state to seek elucidation on cross-examination, and it was defendant's admissions on cross-examination that, in turn, permitted the rebuttal. During cross-examination, defendant admitted that he consumed either two or a few beers. He volunteered that he then walked around West Warwick for three hours before he got into his automobile. At this point in the case, the jury was entitled to know that notwithstanding his alleged three-hour stroll, defendant appeared intoxicated when he was arrested. During the hearing on the motion in limine, which by definition took place pretrial, defendant had not yet presented the fragmented chronology that would open the door to the rebuttal evidence. The trial justice explicitly left an opening for the Malloy observations to come to light on rebuttal, and come to light they did, based on the gaps in defendant's direct testimony. A motion in limine is inherently conditional, and the trial justice's further review of the issue was proper. See, e.g., State v. Torres, 787 A.2d 1214, 1220 (R.I.2002) (The preliminary grant or denial of an in limine motion `need not be taken as a final determination of the admissibility of the evidence referred to in the motion.'). The state's questions on cross-examination attempted to fill in the gap of defendant's testimony on direct examination, when defendant did not specify what he was doing between the end of his job and 11:30 p.m., the time he said he began driving around West Warwick. On direct examination, defendant referred to parking in the lot of a Chinese restaurant, but gave no further information as to what he did between driving into the lot of that restaurant and driving out of it. The state's questions on cross-examination attempted to get defendant to elaborate about this time period. The record discloses that defendant testified on direct examination that he could not recall the alleged assault of Senerchia. He stated that he did not remember pulling into any parking lot prior to his eventual stop at Tomaselli's, where he was pursued by police cars. The defendant also stated that he had no memory of any interaction with Senerchia prior to his arrest in the parking lot of Tomaselli's. The defendant could not account for the period between 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. other than to say that he was walking around and admiring the Rhode Island architecture. There was no manufactured issue here, as in O'Dell, but rather a line of questions logically flowing from defendant's inability to recall specifically any events leading up to his interaction with police in the parking lot of Tomaselli's. The incomplete and rather counterintuitive time frame presented by defendant on direct examination opened defendant to a searching cross-examination; in turn, defendant's lack of memory, denial of pertinent events, and eventual implicit assertion of sobriety on cross-examination opened the door for the prosecution to introduce Malloy's testimony on rebuttal. The state's cross-examination was proper, and defendant himself opened the door to Malloy's rebuttal testimony. Therefore, the trial justice was acting within his discretion both in initially excluding the testimony while noting the possibility of later admission, and, ultimately, in admitting the testimony upon further motion. The parties did not cite the following cases below or in their briefs; however, in light of the discussion at oral argument, we pause to address Handy v. Geary, 105 R.I. 419, 252 A.2d 435 (1969) and its progeny as they relate to testimony regarding alcohol consumption. In Handy, this Court set forth a procedure to be followed when the issue of alcohol consumption is raised: [B]efore evidence of drinking of intoxicants may be presented to the jury, the trial justice shall conduct a preliminary evidentiary hearing on this issue in the absence of the jury. If he [or she] finds that the evidence is such that different minds can naturally and fairly come to different conclusions on the question of intoxication, as we have defined that term, then and only then, may evidence of drinking be admitted under proper instructions for ultimate determination of such question by the jury under the same test. Id. at 431, 252 A.2d at 441-42. In State v. Amaral, 109 R.I. 379, 386, 285 A.2d 783, 787 (1972), we extended the Handy procedure to criminal cases. The defendant did not present a Handy argument on appeal, and we do not consider it as a basis for reversal. We note, however, that while the trial justice in this instance did not follow the procedures outlined in Handy or Amaral by name, nor did he refer to that line of cases, the trial justice did, in fact, conduct a hearing on defendant's motion in limine  in which he weighed and considered the evidence related to defendant's possible intoxication and ruled that it would be inadmissible unless defendant opened the door through his own testimony. Additionally, when the state sought to revisit this issue after defendant's questionable tale, the trial justice once again met with counsel out of the presence of the jury to consider whether to admit the testimony in rebuttal. We deem this appropriate. If Handy and Amaral apply at all, the hearings conducted on the record indicate that the trial justice did, in fact, act within the spirit of our decisions in the Handy line of cases.