Court Opinion

ID: 9686389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:45:51.989234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:39.578021
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing

TATE, Justice.
The defendants were convicted of aggravated arson, La.R.S. 14:51, and sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. On our original hearing on their appeal, we concluded, one justice dissenting, that their conviction must be reversed' on the basis of a long-settled jurisprudential rule applicable at the time of trial. We granted rehearing because of the State’s earnest, insistence of error. Upon reconsideration, we adhere to our original view that the convictions must be reversed and the matter remanded for re-trial.

Failure to Catition Jury as to Effect to be Given to Prior Inconsistent Statements

The context circumstances are as follows :
The State called Allen Ray Landry as a witness. The prosecutor asked Landry if he knew anything about the dynamiting with which the defendants are charged. Landry replied that all he knew about it was what he read in the newspapers. ,
Pleading surprise, the State proceeded to question Landry about prior inconsistent statements allegedly given by him to three police officers. The defendant made a general objection to all testimony “along that line” of prior inconsistent statements and reserved a bill thereto. Tr. 510. The perfected bill was reserved “to the Court’s procedure in impeaching a witness called by the State.” Bill of Exceptions No. 13.
The police officers in question subsequently testified that, several months after the dynamiting, they had interviewed. Lan*129dry.-.Laiidry had informed them, they said, that,- on the day following the dynamiting, the defendant Ray had told him “that they had taken care of the vehicle” [apparently, the dynamited Cadillac] and “the place lit up like á Christmas tree.”
The settled rule in Louisiana is that, when a witness other than the defendant is impeached by the admission of a prior inconsistent statement, the statement is admissible only on the issue of credibility and not as substantive evidence of the defendant’s guilt. State v. Whitfield, 253 La. 679, 219 So.2d 493 (1969) and other decisions cited by our original opinion.
Further, in an unbroken line of decisions stemming from State v. Reed, 49 La.Ann. 704, 21 So. 732 (1897), this court had held that, when such impeachment testimony is introduced, it is reversal error for the trial court not to caution the jury at the time of introduction as to the limited purpose of the inconsistent statement (for impeachment, not as substantive proof of guilt) ; and moreover, due to the grave prejudice to an accused so sustained, that such error is ground for reversal even though the defendant failed to request such an instruction at the time the (merely) impeaching testimony is introduced.
We have most recently adhered to this view in State v. Barbar, 250 La. 509, 197 So.2d 69 (1967), citing the reasons therefor and the unbroken jurisprudence to this effect. In this recent unanimous decision, we specifically stated that, “in the absence of specific statutory authority to the contrary, this court should continue to follow the precedent already set down by its previous decisions.” 197 So.2d 72.
In our original opinion, we adhered to the view that this jurisprudential rule, in effect at the time this case was tried, required reversal under the law applicable at the time of trial, sentencing, and appeal. We therefore reversed.
However, as to all trials to take place following the finality of this decision, we overruled State v. Barbar and its predecessor decisions, for reasons more fully stated by us in our original opinion. The effect of this prospective overruling, to which we adhere on rehearing, is that in cases tried hereafter we shall require a defendant to specifically request .the trial judge to give the limiting instruction as to the effect of impeachment testimony, in order to avail himself of its omission.
The State does not contend that the law is otherwise than as above summarized, nor that in fact the trial judge here gave the caution as to the limited effect of impeachment testimony as required by such unbroken former jurisprudence.1
*131The principal thrust of the State’s contention is that Barbar should be overruled because it is wrong, since by the 1966 Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure an error cannot be complained of on appeal unless objected to at the time of occurrence and unless at this time a bill of exceptions is reserved. Article 841.
However, as the Official Revision Comment to this article notes, the Article 841 of the 1966 Code involves no change in statutory regulation of this particular question. This article’s predecessor provision, La.R.S. 15 :502 (1950) (incorporating earlier statutory enactments to the same effect) provides, in wording substantially identical to the present Code article’s pertinent provision : “No error, not patent on the face of the record, can be availed of after verdict, unless objection shall have been made at the time of the happening of such error and unless at the time of the ruling on the objection a bill of exceptions shall have been reserved to such adverse ruling.” 2
Thus, for over seven decades the law of Louisiana has been, as stated by Barbar in 1967: Despite any statutory requirement that an objection be noted and a bill reserved at the time an alleged error is committed, nevertheless (in view of the prejudice otherwise sustained by an accused) a trial judge is under an affirmative duty, even in the absence of request, to instruct the jury at the time impeachment testimony is introduced that such is not evidence of guilt; that it is only evidence of a prior statement reflecting upon the credibility of a witness who denied at the trial having made such statement, in proof only of which is the impeaching testimony offered.
We should note, as stated in our original opinion, that by virtue of Bill No. 13 3, as well as of Bills Nos. 2 and 15 (see Art. VIII), the testimony of Landry and of the three impeaching police officers is before us for review, in connection with the impropriety alleged in introducing such impeachment testimony. Under virtually *133identical circumstances, presenting the identical issue now before us for review, we so held in State v. Barbar, 250 La. 509, 197 So.2d 69 (1967).
The State, conceding that for us to affirm the conviction we must overrule Bar-bar, asks us to overrule this latter decision retrospectively. The effect of such overruling would be to require us, now, to affirm only on the basis of a different rule we expressly adopt today for the purpose of affirming. To do so in a criminal prosecution — to change the rules in the middle of the game — to apply a new rule just so as to affirm a conviction; and thus to discard a rule just recently reaffirmed and in existence at the time of the trial for over seven decades, by reason of which we are obliged to reverse — amounts to such fundamental unfairness as to verge on a denial of due process. See James v. United States, 366 U.S. 213, 81 S.Ct. 1052, 6 L.Ed.2d 246 (1961).

Decree

For the reasons assigned, we therefore reinstate our original decree reversing the convictions and sentences. The case is remanded to the Fifteenth Judicial District Court for further proceedings in accordance with law.
Original decree reinstated, and case remanded.

. The justice dissenting from our original opinion noted that the trial court had sustained an objection to an isolated question in the testimony of one of the police *131officers and had instructed the jury to disregard this statement. The State does not contend on rehearing that such constituted the limiting instruction required under Barbm-.

. Compare Article 841: “An irregularity or error in the proceedings cannot be availed of after the verdict unless it is objected to at the time of its occurrence and a bill of exceptions is reserved to the adverse ruling of the court on such objection.” Likewise, the provisions of present Article 920 that the appellate court can consider only formal bills of exceptions and errors patent on the record were substantially contained in former La.R.S. 15:55S (1960) : “Unless the error is patent on the face of the record, an appellate court can not consider or determine any question which was not submitted to and passed upon by the trial judge.”

. As earlier stated, that this was reserved as to the trial court’s sustaining a general objection as to the entire line of evidence concerning prior inconsistent statements, with the bill of exception questioning the procedure used by the trial court in impeaching a witness called by the State.