Court Opinion

ID: 9779535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 22:05:38.430568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:27.648229
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting in part. I cannot agree with that part of the opinion which puts this court’s stamp of approval on the “grandstanding” of the state’s attorney. In spite of his knowledge that the wife of the appellant was going to refuse to testify, the prosecuting attorney nevertheless called her to the stand, and asked her incriminating questions, thereby causing her to invoke her Fifth Amendment right before the jury, and to have counsel appointed by the trial court. While the victim was on the stand she was asked by the prosecutor if her mother didn’t offer to pay her money not to come to testify in court. At a bench conference between the court and the attorneys the following conversation took place: DEFENSE COUNSEL: If — if—if the court please, this is his case in chief and what he’s attempting to do and has already brought before the jury what he says is a collateral crime. STATE’S ATTORNEY: By the mother. THE COURT: Do you object? DEFENSE COUNSEL: Yes sir, I object. THE COURT: All right, I’m going to sustain it and I’m going to admonish the jury. I think it’s — I think it needs to be admonished. [Emphasis added.] In my opinion this colloquy was sufficient to inform the court that the mother intended to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights. She obviously knew the state was going to try to present her to the jury as a lying criminal. In Foster v. State, 285 Ark. 363, 687 S.W.2d 829 (1985), we discussed the matter of a wife being called as a witness even though she was suspected of killing her husband. The state called her to the stand even though it knew she was going to invoke the Fifth Amendment. In our opinion we quoted from the Arkansas Court of Appeals (Sims v. State, 4 Ark. App. 303, 631 S.W.2d 14 (1982)), as follows: The evil in the non-testimony of such a witness is not the mere calling of the witness, but the obvious inferences drawn by a jury to a series of questions, to all of which the witness refuses to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds. In that case the questions themselves “may well have been the equivalent in the jury’s mind of testimony.” [Cites omitted.] Such improper questioning, not technically being testimony at all, deprives an accused of his right to cross-examine the witnesses against him as guaranteed by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the federal constitution .... Even if the bench conference highlighted above was insufficient to notify the trial court that Mrs. Kiefer was going to exercise her Fifth Amendment right, the court was alerted to this when, after being called as a witness, she approached the bench and informed the court she did not wish to testify. At this point there should have been an in-chambers or a bench discussion concerning her refusal. Placing her on the stand before the jury and causing her to exercise her right, plus appointing a defense attorney, was sufficiently prejudicial to the appellant to require a mistrial.