Court Opinion

ID: 9590576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:56:13.108029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:34:30.740743
License: Public Domain

ROSSMAN, J.,
dissenting.
I believe that the trial court’s ruling should be sustained. The evidence was offered solely to show bias or motive.1 It was irrelevant for that purpose and, therefore, was properly excluded. Accordingly, I dissent.
OEC 412 was enacted for the principal purpose of protecting victims of sexual crimes from the degrading and embarrassing disclosure of intimate details of their private lives. Although the statute strictly limits when and what *679evidence may be admitted, it is very careful to preserve a defendant’s constitutional right to present an adequate defense by offering relevant and probative evidence. Thus, it specifically provides that a defendant shall not be prevented from introducing evidence which is relevant to show bias or a motive for a false accusation. The trial court is called on to maintain a proper balance of these important interests of the victim and the defendant. The rule of relevancy becomes the key in guiding the court to a correct decision. The rule requires that offered evidence must have probative worth; it must serve to advance the inquiry.
The majority accepts defendant’s contention that his proposed testimony of alleged prior sexual intercourse with the victim tends to establish that the victim had a motive to accuse him of rape falsely. However, as defendant himself points out, the argument between the two had to do with his having had sexual relations with the victim’s best friend. The proffered evidence is of minimal probative value at best on the question of whether the victim had a motive to make a false charge of rape against defendant. It certainly would not be worth what it would cost, especially when evaluated in the light of the counter-balancing factor under the statute to spare victims from this kind of unnecessary courtroom humiliation.
The balancing process which OEC 412 creates does not result in any injustice; it simply acknowledges that defendant has no constitutional right to introduce irrelevant evidence. His right to introduce relevant evidence remains intact and was fully protected by the trial court’s ruling. Defendant was allowed to explore thoroughly the circumstances surrounding his sexual relations with the victim’s best friend. The jury had all the facts it needed to make a just decision. The trial court admitted evidence that the victim had been dating defendant for six weeks before this incident, that just prior to the alleged rape the victim discovered that defendant had been sexually involved with a mutual friend the night before and that the victim acknowledged that this discovery made her angry. There was ample evidence to establish that the victim possibly had a motive to accuse falsely.
In the face of this already-admitted evidence, defendant’s disputed testimony of prior sexual relations would have had virtúally no probative value on the issue of motive and *680bias and could likely have led to an impermissible inference of consent in direct contravention of OEC 412. In other words, even if we accept both the truth of defendant’s claims and the extremely tenuous proposition that an alleged prior sexual relationship is relevant to show motive because it increases the victim’s tendency to accuse falsely, we are here faced with a situation in which the potential motive had already been established with much stronger evidence — the victim’s self-confessed anger towards defendant. The disputed testimony regarding sexual relations would have added nothing to the inquiry and was therefore irrelevant. It would also have subjected her to the disclosure of intimate and embarrassing details of her private life. Both of those results are impermissible, except when the protection of defendant’s constitutional rights to confront witnesses makes them unavoidable. The admission of other evidence in this case clearly protected that right. Therefore, the disputed testimony was properly excluded.
I would affirm.

 As the majority points out, no argument was made that the evidence was admissible for impeachment purposes.