Court Opinion

ID: 9753958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:36:08.047378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:45.625126
License: Public Domain

*286
Lowe, J.,

dissenting:

The English common law tradition of "cross-examination to credit” permitted counsel to inquire into particular acts of a witness’s misconduct, though it had not been the basis for conviction of a crime. In England, the courts trusted the disciplined discretion of the bar to avoid abuses. In this country there is a confusing variety of decisions, and ironically, even in Maryland that confusion exists.
Many of the courts in this country permit acts of misconduct to be used to impeach whether convictions ensued or not. A substantial number of courts prohibit altogether cross-examination as to acts of misconduct for impeachment purposes because of the dangers otherwise of prejudice (especially if the witness is a party), of distraction and confusion, and of abuse by the asking of unfounded questions.
Although the latter view is "arguably the fairest and most expedient practice”, C. McCormick, Evidence (2nd ed.) at 82-83, Maryland appears to fall in a third category which recognizes that cross-examination concerning acts of misconduct is subject to a discretionary control by the trial judge. Perhaps preoccupied with its newly identified "credibility rule”, the majority appears to have overlooked this traditional but limited discretion which, when abused, affronts the constitutional right of confrontation. Before addressing my specific differences with the majority, therefore, I should point out a generally recognized basic beginning point — since the majority did not — that a judicial infringement upon a defendant’s right of cross-examination addressed to a witness’s credibility is error of constitutional magnitude, and expressly so since Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974). If such error exists, it *287can hardly be harmless, but whether it exists depends upon the exercise of judicial discretion in limiting it. The discretionary right to interfere in such an inquiry in a criminal case is only permitted as to degree, purpose and relevance. Trial judges must decide when an interrogation has become repetitive or harassing, id. at 316; and beyond that, the scope of cross-examination may be limited only if it is irrelevant.
Having disregarded the constitutional ramifications (perhaps as unnecessary in light of its result), the majority’s brushing aside the discretionary responsibility of the judge to decide the relevance of the proffer was effected by quoting a Pickwickian platitude from Smith v. State, 273 Md. 152, 157 (1974), that a "witness’s credibility is always relevant.” It then underscored the Smith sophism by declaring an equally unaffecting piety —
"The defense sought inquiry into a matter relevant to truthfulness.”
If that banality is to be the test of the scope of cross-examination to test credibility, the majority will have effected what I have discerned as its implication, that there is no exclusionary discretion left to a trial judge in the sphere of cross-examination. The "credibility rule”, newly identified by the majority, is a poor substitute offered for the faith that the English reposed in its bar and that we once reposed in our trial bench, i.e., to discern in context those fact-bound questions of relevance so remote to us when viewed on a printed page. The majority’s newly named but unexplained "credibility rule” appears to return to the old English tradition from which our system had evolved — where only the lawyer can restrict the scope of his credibility examination of a witness. Yet, if discretion is to be exercised, it should remain with the trial judge rather than a biased advocate, since where such discretion is necessary, the questions of relevance will obviously be close ones requiring a delicate balance. After this case, however, the judge may not interfere as long as the inquiry relates in some way to the witness’s past acts of veracity without regard to whether the *288acts relate to the issue litigated and in controversy through that witness.
I cannot accept either that interpretation of the law, or our right to change that which precedent has established here as the law. In the past, we have frequently said that unless the proferred probe is unquestionably relevant, we cannot call it an "abuse” simply to substitute our own judgment. Were we permitted to do that, I concede that here the wiser part of discretion, and- a better practice, would have been to have demanded a more detailed proffer, in camera, and then err, if at all, on the side of prudence. But the proffer here, to which appellant is limited, did not point to an act of misconduct pertaining to any motive or bias of the witness, nor was it relevant to the issue within the range of the litigated controversy.
Bearing in mind that the accused conceded the corpus delicti of the crime, the sole issue litigated or in controversy was his criminal agency, i.e., the victim’s identification of him as the perpetrator. That is not what the proffer sought to impeach. The proffer, if true, disclosed that the witness had admitted that an alleged assault upon her was not an assault at all.
"MR. KAHN: ... I think I should proffer in this fashion, I have information that the witness made a criminal charge against this Vrhovac of assault on her. And then subsequent, during the course of the trial admitted that she did not tell the truth, that it was not an assault on her. And that he was, as a result of her recanting her statement, found not guilty.”
This collateral proffer may have attacked her credibility regarding what constituted the elements of an assault (corpus delicti), but not upon the issue in controversy, which was the identification of the perpetrator (criminal agency).
We can certainly assume that Judge Brizendine sensed some lack of relevance between the attestation of the witness and the inquisition directed at her, although he did not *289detail his explanation. Unlike the Puritans who judged Hester Prynne, the judge’s expression indicated rather that he did not adhere to a belief that one is marked for life by a single indiscretion. He implied that multiple instances, presumably even if collateral and irrelevant, may indicate a propensity for untruthfulness, but that a single irrelevant incident may lead to such time-consuming and distracting explanations that even the uncontested corpus delicti issue may be obscured when the only controversy is identification. In short, he weighed the probative value against the danger of misdirection and said:
'T think it’s an independent matter. And if it were more than one, but one isolated instance, I don’t think it’s relevant to this, so I will sustain the objection.”
That is precisely the discretionary exercise that the Court of Appeals permitted the trial judge in Caldwell v. State, 276 Md. 612 (1976), which the majority cited but did not explicate, explain or try to distinguish. In that double-rape case, the trial judge had ruled that defense counsel could not question the prosecuting witnesses with regard to their accusations of rape against two other men, alleged to have occurred contemporaneously with the attacks at issue in that case. The Court’s limited discussion there points up that the sole issue on appeal is not whether we believe the inquiry to have been relevant or irrelevant, but whether there was a cognizable question regarding relevance. If there was any question, the trial judge’s discretion was not abused, however he ruled. The Court of Appeals was not persuaded that the trial judge had abused his discretion in Caldwell, supra at 618, just as I am not in this case.
They rely instead on two criminal cases from our Court, DeLilly v. State, 11 Md. App. 676 (1974), and Mulligan v. State, 18 Md. App. 588 (1973), and two civil cases in the Court of Appeals, Mahan v. State, 172 Md. 373 (1937), and Sappington v. Fairfax, 135 Md. 186 (1919). In both DeLilly and Mulligan, there was a clear unequivocal and weighty relevance between the issue asked for impeachment *290purposes and the issue in controversy through the witness’s testimony, i.e., between the attestation and the inquisition. In DeLilly, the issue attested by the witness was, as it is here, the identification of the accused; the issue under inquiry was a clearly relevant prior misidentification of an accused in the same occurrence. In Mulligan, the issue attested by the police officer-witness was the truthfulness of his report which contained a recitation of appellant’s disputed statement; the issue under inquiry was the officer’s truthfulness of past reporting. Each case has an obvious relevance between the attestation and the inquisition, and we properly held that such relevant credibility issues were improperly proscribed.
It is significant that the civil cases relied on by the majority both dealt with questionably relevant issues that had been admitted regarding a witness’s credibility. In cursorily affirming those cases, the Court of Appeals said simply that it was not error to have admitted testimony of unrelated mendacity. That does not mean that to have precluded the questions and answers would have been error. To the contrary, it supported the trial judge’s exercise of discretion as I would in the case before us. Nor would it have been improper to have admitted the inquiry in the case before us, although it may have been imprudent to permit this surprise red herring diversion and confusion of issues before the jury, considerations which appear to weigh heavily in the discretionary balancing. See Smith, supra at 162.
Because I so firmly believe that to hobble cross-examination improperly interferes with the constitutional right of confrontation, I need hardly address the majority’s harmless error apologia. I do not believe that an improper interference with the right to test a witness’s credibility could be harmless. It is perhaps for that reason that this issue has been treated traditionally as a discretionary exercise rather than an evidentiary rule of right or wrong. If a judge’s discretion in this case is abused, it necessarily means that he has crossed the demarcation of his discretionary authority and the error is of constitutional *291dimension. But if he has not crossed that line of discretionary responsibility, we cannot interfere.
In weighing the probative value of the collateral disclosure, the judge must review it in perspective, i.e., within the range of the litigated controversy and the evidence elicited. Does the fact that a witness had once charged a boyfriend with a crime confuse or clarify her identification of the appellant as the perpetrator of a crime which indisputably had been committed upon her? To review his discretionary exercise, we, too, must try to gain some similar perspective of the trial setting from our cold record. To do that we should have a far better picture of what transpired at trial vis-a-vis the identification of appellant, than has been afforded us by the majority. We will need at least as much factual detail as if we were reviewing for harmless error.
"The determination of whether there has been an abuse of discretion necessarily requires consideration of the particular circumstances bearing upon each individual case. Clearly, the absolute preclusion of cross-examination pertaining to a witness’s motive for testifying would be an abuse of discretion, but beyond that we must look to such factors as the scope of interrogation permitted, how relevant the particular inquiry is to bias or motive, and whether the defendant has been prejudiced by the court’s ruling.” Fletcher v. State, 50 Md. App. 349, 357 (1981).
A clearer depiction of the scenario from the trial record revealed that the identification evidence was not only clear and convincing — beyond a reasonable doubt — but was supported by circumstantial and physical corroboration, as well as numerous tests of reliability that we have applied in other cases. The evidence in the record as revealed to the court and jury was as follows:
On the evening of 30 September 1980 a mother was awaiting the arrival home of her 18-year-old daughter. The mother was uneasy because the daughter had said she would *292be home about 9:00 o’clock and that time had passed. The mother’s anxiety proved to be well-founded. About 10:30 she saw her daughter, bent over at the waist, walking with difficulty toward the house. The daughter was battered, bloody and bruised. She called out to her mother and kept exclaiming, "I have been beaten, I have been raped.” As put by the police officer, who talked to her upon responding to the call reporting the crime, she "indicated” that her assailant had forced her to "vaginally, anally, and orally copulate [him].” Her physical appearance, injuries and emotional state graphically bore out her allegations. Her mother described her daughter’s appearance: "[H]er head was about as big as a basketball ... it was so swelled out. And her eye, the one eye was closed, and the other was half open.” The police officer depicted her injuries: "Mass contusions and bruises on her throat and neck area. Face was badly battered, left side of the face was extremely swollen. The left eye was swollen shut. And all the blood vessels were broken in the right eye. I couldn’t observe the left eye because it was swollen shut.” An examination by a medical doctor disclosed that "she had ... a bit of swelling of her left eye and left orbital region. She had some swelling of her neck and face with multiple bruises. . . . She had a bloody discharge coming from her ears ... she had bruises on her left arm.” There was an abrasion type or puncture wound on one of her fingers. There was tenderness of the vulva area (vaginal) and of the peritoneum (the area lateral to and beyond the vagina). Her injuries were so severe that the gynecologist who examined her referred her to the general surgeon at the hospital and to an eye, ear and nose specialist.
When the daughter had arrived home after her travail she was "sobbing and crying hard.” Even at the time the officer talked to her she was "breathing hard” and "sobbing and crying.” On the way to the hospital, she pointed out where the assault had taken place. At the scene the police recovered the underpants which had been stripped from her during the rape, numerous coins and a book of matches. The ground appeared to be "disarranged.”
The assailant was identified by the victim as Thomas *293Wayne Cox. She recognized him from having "known him” in the neighborhood, and she promptly gave his name to her mother and to the police at a time when it was inconceivable that she would fabricate her known assailant. He was forthwith apprehended in a house on the property where the attack had occurred. When he was taken into custody, his clothes, in the words of the arresting officer, were "very dirty, very dusty, had a lot of loose dirt, his dungaree jacket and his blue jeans .... [I]t’s like he just got down and rolled around on the ground. . . . [H]e had some grass stains also on his elbows of his jacket and the knees of his pants.” There were four "newly made” abrasions or scratches on his arm. He had been released from the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown the day the attack took place.
At the trial the victim recounted the details of her ordeal. She had left her girlfriend’s house about 9:05 p.m. to walk the three blocks to her home. She saw Cox and remarked: "I thought you were supposed to be in jail.” He replied that he had just been released earlier that day. He asked her for a hug, and she refused.
"And then he pushed me to the ground and started strangling me and beating me in the face. And he just kept beating me. And he gave me a hard blow to my left ear and I passed out. Then when I awoke I was moved further to the side of the house. And I noticed that my pants and my underwear were gone, and his pants were down. And he was having vaginal intercourse and still beating me in the face. And he just kept beating me. And then he gave me a hard blow again to the same left ear and I passed out. And then the second time when I awoke he was trying to pull my right eye out.. . actually trying to pull it out. ... By grabbing the eyeball itself. . ..
And then I put my hands up towards his face to try to, you know, give — get him to stop. And that’s when he bit me in my wrist and my finger. He bit down really hard. And I still don’t have too much feeling in that finger... . Then after he beat me he *294kept the beating up. And he started anal sex.... First he put four fingers up anally, then put his penis anally. And I kept telling him to stop. I said it hurt. And he said, it doesn’t. And then he kept, you know, beating me, and my eye was starting to close up. And then he got up and stayed on top of me and put his penis in my mouth.”
He had vaginal intercourse with her a second time. He then pulled up his pants and began to walk toward the end of the yard. He excused his actions by telling her, "Sorry I had to do this but I ain’t had a woman in six months.” The victim was so weak she had "to pull herself up by the fence.” She was unable to find her underpants, but put on her slacks and located her purse. Her ribs were "very bruised” and her legs were like "rubberbands.” Because of the beating she had to walk very slowly and in a bent over position. She went directly home and told her mother what had happened. The police and an ambulance arrived shortly thereafter and she was taken to the hospital.
At his trial Cox did not dispute the overwhelming testimonial and physical evidence establishing the corpus delicti of the crimes. He did, however, attempt to cast a reasonable doubt on the proof presented by the State to show that he was the criminal agent. He produced a parade of witnesses to establish an alibi. They placed him in the locality of the scene of the crime before, during and after thé time the crimes were alleged to have been committed, but they attempted to account for his activities during the critical period so as to indicate that he could not have been the perpetrator. There was no evidence offered by Cox concerning the fresh scratches on his arm or to explain the condition of his clothing.
From that review we can see, in addition to the physical evidence — the dirt and dust all over appellant’s clothes, his elbows and knees grass stained, the unexplained scratches on his arms and the fact of his apprehension practically on the situs of the crime — that his own "alibi” witnesses placed him at the situs of the crime with both time and opportunity *295available to have committed it. That the appellant may have been already sexually satisfied is, as an alibi, all but incredible. One of the activities Cox engaged in was with an admitted homosexual who lived across the street from Cox, who testified that on the day in question Cox came to his house about 8:00 p.m., and he performed a homosexual act on Cox. Cox left about 9:00 p.m. and sat on the porch of the house across the street. This was the same house in which Cox was arrested a short time later.
There is the further reliability as indicated in Moore v. State, 26 Md. App. 556, 562-567 (1975),1 of a young girl in excruciating pain immediately following an attack and while still emotionally engulfed in the situation, relating to her mother the name of her attacker. The chance of misidentification was minimized because she knew the appellant from the neighborhood and his corroborated disclosure to her of his prior prison incarceration is itself admissible as further proof of identity. See Mollar v. State, 25 Md. App. 291 (1975).
With such overwhelming reliable corroboration of the positive in-court identification by the victim, it is inconceivable that because the victim may have once born, and subsequently recanted, an improper charge against a boyfriend, she would be lying or mistaken now in the identification of her assailant. It is equally inconceivable that any reasonable person would have been affected by the disclosure that she once had admitted that an assault was not an assault (which I will here assume to have been true) and raised therefrom a reasonable doubt of appellant’s criminal agency in this case. If that is so, the trial judge did not err, even if we find that the inquiry was relevant beyond question, thus depriving the judge of his discretionary exercise. Dorsey v. State, 276 Md. 638 (1976).
I regret that the majority does not address what it *296recognizes as an interference with cross-examination as an issue of constitutional magnitude. I regret further that they have so little faith in a trial judge that they assume from a cold record on a fact-bound issue to improve on his judgment by substituting their own, when the limitation on cross-examination has clearly done no substantial harm to the defense, even if it had been an issue of error rather than an exercise of discretion.
But it was not error; it was a proper exercise of discretion to avoid distraction and confusion by the jurors. Whére is there a single case cited or citable by the majority holding that a victim’s past may be scoured for a single suggestio falsi, however irrelevant, which may then be used to becloud the issue before the factfinder? There was no case for the majority to cite permitting such collateral excursions into a victim’s past.
There is now.

. In Moore v. State, 26 Md. App. 556 (1975), we held that reliability of an excited utterance overcame the hearsay impediment when a youngster in pain told his doctor who caused the injury, "Daddy did it”. That same reliability adheres to a young girl concededly badly beaten and raped and ravished who immediately identifies her attacker to her mother.