Court Opinion

ID: 9763417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:44:46.50788+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:42.600944
License: Public Domain

CRANDALL, Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent.
Section 491.015, RSMo (1986), Missouri’s Rape Shield Statute, provides that evidence of the victim’s prior sexual conduct is inadmissible, except under certain specific instances. If a defendant proposes to offer evidence of the victim’s prior sexual conduct, he must comply with the following procedures:
[H]e shall file with the court a written motion accompanied by an offer of proof or make an offer of proof on the record outside the hearing of the jury. The court shall hold an in camera hearing to determine the sufficiency of the offer of proof and may at that hearing hear evidence if the court deems it necessary to determine the sufficiency of the offer of proof. If the court finds any of the evidence offered admissible under this section the court shall make an order stating the scope of the evidence which may be introduced....
§ 491.015.3, RSMo (1986).
Here, defendant did not file a written motion accompanied by an offer of proof. Thus, the trial court never reached the stage of an in camera hearing and never determined either the sufficiency of the offer of proof or the scope of the evidence that might be offered.
In addition, it is possible that victim’s bias against defendant, if any, could have been established without reference to the prior molestation. Standing alone, the pri- or incident was not relevant to the present case. The earlier incident happened more than three years before the incident in question and the acts which constituted the prior abuse were different from those which constituted defendant’s sexual abuse of victim. In addition, the relevancy of the prior sexual abuse to show that victim fabricated the story about defendant was dependent first upon establishing victim’s bias against defendant and her desire to have him out of the house and then upon her subsequent denial that she knew her accusations would result in his removal from the family home.
In State v. Williams, 724 S.W.2d 652 (Mo.App.1986), this court permitted defendant’s cross-examination of the victim of a robbery about her own illicit activities because such testimony was directed at her motive to falsely identify the defendant as her assailant. Id. at 655. The crucial distinction between Williams and the present case is that the testimony which defendant sought to elicit from A.C. concerned prior sexual conduct, the admission of which is governed by the Rape Shield Statute and subject to stricter scrutiny. Also, in Williams, the testimony which the defendant was permitted to extract was about an argument between him and the victim concerning her illegal activities. Id. at 656. The argument occurred two weeks after the robbery. Id. at 655. Thereafter, despite the victim’s previous inability to identify the robber, she identified the defendant. Id. In Williams, testimony about the specific argument established the basis *913of the victim’s motive to lie. Id. Based upon the record in the case before us, however, evidence of A.C.’s prior molestation did not directly establish her motive to lie. The proposed questioning about the incident was nothing more than a fishing expedition by defendant that would have required a nine-year-old victim of sexual abuse to relive a traumatic experience in the hope of eliciting probative evidence favorable to the defense. This is precisely the type of questioning that the Rape Shield Statute was designed to prevent.
For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the judgment of conviction. I therefore dissent.