Court Opinion

ID: 9604073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:14:09.713749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:10.487391
License: Public Domain

RAPER, Justice
(concurring).
I concur in everything my brothers have said and particularly in the result reached, except insofar as it might be inconsistent with what follows. I do not believe they have gone far enough though, and would have held and directed that the trial courts of this State shall no longer give any special cautionary instruction in rape cases, such as that here given or offered or approved by State v. Hines, 1958, 79 Wyo. 65, 331 P.2d 605, cert. den. Petition of Hines, 366 U.S. 972, 81 S.Ct. 1938, 6 L.Ed.2d 1261; State v. Holm, 1950, 67 Wyo. 360, 224 P.2d 500; State v. Koch, 1948, 64 Wyo. 175, 189 P.2d 162; Strand v. State, 1926, 36 Wyo. 78, 252 P. 1030, or any other case.
My colleagues misconceive the function of an appellate court that it must only dispose of the matter immediately before it, without regard to the fact that in so limiting its effort, it is permitting the perpetuation of error in the future by neglect to frame a course for trial courts and bar to follow. It is true that this court will not generally pass upon questions not necessary to be decided in the disposition of the matter immediately before it. It is a sound rule of appellate practice but it is not so unyielding that we must blind ourselves to other compelling considerations. . Justice cannot be administered from within the bindings of a straightjacket. As Chief Justice Blume has observed in those cases where there is a question bound to arise .again, it is not only our right but our duty to decide the question and prevent further appeals. A decision on a point under these circumstances cannot be regarded as obiter dictum. Chicago and North Western Railway Co. v. City of Riverton, Fremont County, 1952, 70 Wyo. 84, 246 P.2d 789, reh. den. 70 Wyo. 119, 128, 247 P.2d 660, 663-664. In the same case it was observed that “were we to limit our decisions strictly and literally to the arguments advanced by counsel in a case, the law in this jurisdiction would be in a sorry state.”
Even though in Chicago and North Western Railway Co., supra, the court had particular reference to a retrial of the same case, it was a principle that does not stop there. The rule, as stated, is but a segment of one of larger scope. It makes *866no difference whether the question is hound to arise again in the same case on a subsequent trial or in some other case. An appeal is an appeal and consumes the judicial time of the court regardless of in what case it takes place. When there is an uncertainty on a question, even though the court has doubts as to whether a justiciable controversy exists, to prevent the question from arising in the future, the court will decide the question. Green’s Bar, Inc. v. Johnson, 1967, 275 Minn. 471, 147 N.W.2d 686. There is an uncertainty in Wyoming prevailing in the light of a consistent striking down of the instruction in other jurisdictions, with good reason. Where a question is likely to plague the bench and bar in the future, a question will be decided, even though not necessary to the disposition of the case before it. Itasca State Bank v. Superior Court In and For Chochise County, 1968, 8 Ariz.App. 279, 445 P.2d 555. It was said in Cluett, Peabody & Co. v. J. W. Mays, Inc., Sup.1958, 6 Misc.2d 145, 165 N.Y.S.2d 992, rev. 5 A.D.2d 140, 170 N.Y.S.2d 255, motion den. 5 A.D.2d 770, 170 N.Y.S.2d 491, aff. 6 N.Y.2d 952, 190 N.Y.S.2d 1013, 161 N.E.2d 223, even though • it is not necessary for a court to decide a question in the case before it, an exception is made where questions of importance are presented which are likely to arise with frequency. We cannot deny the importance of properly instructing a jury. A proper verdict in a criminal case depends upon correctly instructing the jury. Other courts have not been hesitant in appropriate cases to decide points bound to appear in the future, even though they could let the trial courts bungle along in cloudy areas of the law. Doe v. State, Alas. 1971, 487 P.2d 47, 53; Johnston v. Ing, 1968, 50 Haw. 379, 460, 441 P.2d 138. See also, the discussion and cases cited in footnote 27, 5 C.J.S. Appeal and Error, p. 608, and supplement, as well as 5 Am.Jur. (Appeal and Error), §§ 760 and 768.
Only recently in Tavares v. Horstman, Wyo.1975, 542 P.2d 1275, 1278-1279, we have had an occasion to quote Justice Cardozo from his treatises, “The Nature of the Judicial Process” and “The Growth of the Law”:
* * * If judges have woefully misinterpreted the mores of their day, or if the mores of their day are no longer those of ours, they ought not to tie, in helpless submission, the hands of their successors.’ ”
“ ‘ * * * A rule which in its origin was the creation of the courts themselves, and was supposed in the making to express the mores of the day, may be abrogated by courts when the mores have so changed that perpetuation of the rule would do violence to the social conscience. * * * ’ ”
We cannot permit bad law to infect our jurisprudence.
In failing to take corrective measures, we are doing nothing but contributing to the law’s already álmost unbearable delays. An appellate court is at liberty to decide a case upon any point which in its opinion the ends of justice may require, even though the matter had not been argued. State Highway Commission v. Triangle Development Co., Wyo.1962, 371 P.2d 408, citing Wyuta Cattle Co. v. Connell, 1931, 43 Wyo. 135, 299 P. 279, reh. den. 3 P.2d 101, wherein it was said that if we were limited to the arguments and reasoning of counsel to the exclusion of our own observations, we would be led astray of the true object of the court. That this question was not raised by the Attorney General is of no consequence. The State in the future will be subjected to grievous injury, as will complainants in rape cases. Our function is to promote justice not perpetuate injustice. If we pass up an opportunity to improve and update the administration of justice and discard a fallacious rule, we are not performing our proper judicial function. We are lending the aid of the court to the accomplishment of what is improper.
*867It seems incomprehensible in this land of Esther Morris where the state motto is “Equal Rights” and the central figure on the Great Seal of Wyoming is a woman, that when her sex walks into a courtroom as the complainant victim of rape, she immediately is branded a suspect, second-class citizen, treated with less respect than her assailants.
The defendants have raised a question about the trial court’s cautionary instruction. It has compelled our study in depth of such an instruction and caused an exploration of what the nation’s courts have done and are doing about it. There are authoritative reasons to abolish it entirely from use in this jurisdiction as based qn ancient, outmoded and invalid reasoning.
The instruction had its origin in the writings of Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench from 1671 to 1676. State v. Koch, Wyo.1948, supra; Strand v. State, Wyo.1926, supra. The exact language of his musings, as found in 1 P.C. 634-635, is as follows:
“It is true rape is a most detestable crime, and therefore ought severely and impartially to be punished with death; but it must be remembered, that it is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho [sic] never so innocent.” 1
An examination of the refused instruction, which is little different than the ones this court has approved and to which my *868brethren encourage durability, indicates that the first and third sentences are paraphrased from CALJIC No. 10.22, California Jury Instructions (3d ed.) :
“A charge such as that made against the defendant in this case is one which is easily made and, once made, difficult to defend against, even if the person accused is innocent.
“Therefore, the law requires that you examine the testimony of the female person named in the information with caution.”
Compare them:
“A charge as that made against the Defendants in this case is one, which, generally speaking, is easily made, and once made, difficult to disprove even if the Defendants are innocent.
“From the nature of a case such as this, the complaining witness and the Defendants are usually the only witnesses. “Therefore I charge you that the law requires that you examine the testimony of the prosecuting witness with caution.
“[In giving this instruction, I do not mean to imply an opinion of my own as to the credibility of any witness.]”
The second sentence was unnecessary because the jury was aware of who testified and, not only that, it was an inaccurate statement in the light of corroborating evidence which has here already been reviewed. The bracketed matter was sur-plusage. The jury had already been instructed that “[I]t is the exclusive province of the jury * * * to determine the credibility of all witnesses. * * * ”
The California instruction has been entirely abrogated for use in that state. In People v. Rincon-Pineda, 1975, 14 Cal.3d 864, 123 Cal.Rptr. 119, 132, 538 P.2d 247, 260, it was declared:
“* * * [W]e think the instruction as it has customarily been worded (i. e., CALJIC No. 10.22) is inappropriate in any context, and the further use of such language is hereby disapproved. * * * ”
Rincon-Pineda has literally taken the bull by the horns and has exploded Hale’s myth. After citing extensive statistical data showing that,
“* * * Of the FBI’s four ‘violent crime’ offenses of murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, forcible rape has the highest rate of acquittal or dismissal. * * * Equally striking is the ranking of forcible rape at the bottom of the FBI’s list of major crimes according to percentage of successful prosecutions for the offense charged. * *
'it must be concluded that the charge of rape is not so difficult to defend against as to warrant a cautionary instruction. The court went on to say that: (123 Cal.Rptr. at 132, 538 P.2d at 260):
“Whatever might have been its historical significance, the disapproved instruction now performs no just function, since criminal charges involving sexual conduct are no more easily made or harder to defend against than many other classes of charges, and those who make such accusations should be deemed no more suspect in credibility than any other class of complainants. When such prosecutions present close evidentiary questions, they do so not because a victim— generally a woman — claims to have been sexually assaulted or abused, but because the alleged crime took place in evanescent circumstances difficult to reconstruct in court, a happenstance which may plague prosecution of any crime involving specific intent, and which is indeed a typical occurrence in such nonsexual crimes as fraud and narcotics transactions. A cautionary instruction bred in the circumstances of 17th century criminal rape and criminal justice need not be disinterred in a contemporary California courtroom to insure that a defendant faced essentially by a single accuser will not be casually convicted with*869out due consideration of the relative weight of the evidence.”
California is not the only court to disapprove the instruction. In State v. Feddersen, Iowa, 1975, 230 N.W.2d 510, the instruction has been specifically cast off and the courts of that state now are prohibited from using it. That court declared that in Hale’s rule:
“There are at least four vices in the first paragraph of that instruction. First, it constitutes a comment on the evidence. Second, it applies a stricter test of credibility to the rape victim than to other witnesses in the trial. Third, it applies a stricter test of credibility to rape victims than to victims of other crimes. Fourth, trial courts have been accorded an indiscriminate right to give or refuse to give the instruction absent any guidelines for so doing.”2
In Taylor v. State, 1972, 257 Ind. 664, 278 N.E.2d 273, the defendant tendered two instructions to the trial court which were refused. One cautioned the jury that the courts have always recognized the danger of conviction on her [the prosecutrix in a rape case] uncorroborated testimony and the testimony of the prosecutrix, if inherently improbable and uncorroborated, will not justify or support a conviction. The other was that “her evidence should be carefully scrutinized for the reason that the charge is easy to make and hard to defend.” The court held that it is error for the court to single out any special witness, personally, and burden her testimony with any suggestions which might indicate to the jury that in the opinion of the court such witness was liable to testify falsely. Instructions as to the credibility of witnesses should be general and apply equally to all the witnesses for the State and the defendant alike. Because a witness may be a rape victim is no reason why she should be visited with condemnation, on the one hand, or clothed with sanctity, upon the other. She is before the court as a witness and should be treated by both the court and the jury just as other witnesses are treated — no better and no worse.
In State v. Settle, 1975, 111 Ariz. 394, 531 P.2d 151, defense counsel sought to have the jury given a cautionary instruction in a rape case to the effect that the testimony of the prosecuting witness should be examined with particular care. The instruction was in accord with a past decision of the court. The Supreme Court of Arizona discovered that this was in violation of the state constitution,3 dealing with a comment upon the weight of the evidence, so its rule is now that a cautionary instruction, such as the one sought by the defendant, is a suggestion to the jury to particularly question the testimony of the prosecuting witness and is a comment upon the weight of the evidence and is a personal opinion of the judge concerning the facts of the case.
It is the jury’s province to weigh and allocate the weight to be given to all evidence, direct or circumstantial. Buckles v. State, Wyo. 1972, 500 P.2d 518, 521, cert. den. 409 U.S. 1026, 93 S.Ct. 475, 34 L.Ed. 2d 320. A jury has the uncanny ability of its twelve minds, and being representative of the common sense of the community, to soon and effectively identify the dis*870honest and immoral females coming before them with fraudulent cries of rape. It is not my aim to give those schemers refuge in the law.
The alleged victim should be treated as any other witness in any other type criminal case. Credibility is to be tested by and subjected to the same test and scrutiny as applicable to any other witness.4 To do otherwise is demeaning.
The trial court was not even under the prevailing law of the State required to give the cautionary instruction he did but that is typical of the sincere judge dutifully following what might be considered the unclear past expressions of this court, which said that the cautionary instruction should be given but never reversed for failure to do so. It is doing a disservice to the bench and bar and the people of this State to permit the district courts to continue to wallow in error against the State which cannot appeal or the witness unable to be treated at least equal to other witnesses, including the defendant, who (the witness) likewise cannot appeal. I just cannot join in fostering such error to await some propitious moment, at some uncertain date and occasion in the future, to wipe away such fallacious law. This is a recurrent problem capable of evading review.

. The basis for his conclusion immediately follows the above quote:
“I shall never forget a trial before myself of a rape in the county of Sussex. “There had been one of that county convicted and executed for a rape in that county before some other judges about three assizes before, and I suppose very justly; some malicious people seeing how easy it was to make such an accusation, and how difficult it was for the party accused to clear himself, furnished the two assizes following with many indictments of rapes, wherein the parties accused with some difficulty escaped.
“At the second assizes following there was an antient wealthy man of about sixty-three years old indicted for a rape, which was fully sworn against him by a young girl of fourteen years old, and a concurrent testimony of her mother and father, and some other relations. The antient man, when he came to his defense, alledged [sic] that it was true the fact was sworn, and it was not possible for him to produce witnesses to the negative; but yet, he said, his very age carried a great presumption that he could not be guilty of that crime; but yet he had one circumstance more, that he believed would satisfy the court and the jury, that he neither was nor could be guilty; and being demanded what that was, he said, he had for above seven years last past been afflicted with a rupture so hideous and great, that it was impossible he could carnally know any woman, neither had he upon that account, during all that time carnally known his own wife, and offered to shew [sic] the same openly in court; which for the indecency of it I declined, but appointed the jury to withdraw into some room to inspect this unusual evidence; and they accordingly did so, and came back and gave an account of it to the court, that it was impossible he should have to do with any woman in that kind, much less to commit a rape, for all his bowels seemed to have fallen down in those parts, that they could scarce discern his privities, the rupture being full as big as the crown of a hat, whereupon he was acquitted.
“Again, at ’Northampton assizes, before one of my brother justices upon the Nisi prius, a man was indicted for the rape of two young girls not above fourten [sic] years old, the younger somewhat less, and the rapes full proved, tho’ [sic] peremptorily denied by the prisoner, he was therefore to the satisfaction of the judge and jury convicted ; but before judgment it was most apparently discovered, that it was but a malicious contrivance, and the party innocent ; he was therefore' reprieved before judgment.
“I only mention these instances, that we may be the more cautious upon trials of offenses of this nature, wherein the court and jury may with so much ease be imposed upon without great care and vigilance; the heinousness of the offense many times transporting the judge and jury with so much indignation, that they are over hastily carried to the conviction of the person accused thereof, by the confident testimony sometimes of malicious and false witnesses.”
As can be seen, the defendants he uses for examples were freed.

. See annotation “Duty of court in criminal prosecution for sexual offense to give cautionary instruction to effect that such a charge is easily made and difficult to disprove.” ISO A.L.R. 1489 and Supplemental Decisions. See, in particular, State v. Yates, 1965, 239 Or. 596, 399 P.2d 161, declaring that in a rape case the jury is the judge of effect or value of evidence addressed to it.

. The provision of the Arizona constitution appears in Art. 6, § 27, and reads as follows: “Judges shall not charge juries with respect to matters of fact, nor comment thereon, but shall declare the law. * * *”

. It is noted and suggested that the general instructions in that regard given by the trial judge in this case or something similar would be sufficient:
“The jury is the sole judge of the credibility of the witnesses, and of the weight to be given their testimony. In so doing, you may take into consideration all the facts and circumstances in the ease, and give to each such weight as in the light of your experience and knowledge of human affairs you think it entitled to.
“In judging the credibility of the witnesses in this case, you should take into consideration their demeanor upon the witness stand their apparent intelligence or lack of intelligence, their means of knowledge of the facts testified to, the interest, if any, which any witness may have in the outcome of the trial, the prejudice or motives, or feelings of revenge, if any has been shown by the evidence in this case.
“If you believe from the evidence in this case that any witness has wilfully and corruptly sworn falsely to any material fact in this case, then you are at liberty to disregard all or any part of his or her testimony, except insofar as the same has been corroborated by other and credible evidence, and the facts and circumstances proven upon the trial.”