Court Opinion

ID: 9633931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:08:06.237269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:45.662427
License: Public Domain

STRUCKMEYER, Vice Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I am unable to concur with the majority of the Court in the disposition of this case.
At the onset, two points should be made clear. First, seemingly Dr. Hirsch intended to leave Arizona on a vacation and to be absent from Arizona at the time of the trial. While he was within Arizona’s jurisdiction, the prosecution petitioned the Superior Court for its order to permit his testimony to be videotaped. No effort was made by the prosecution to require his personal attendance by subpoena. Indeed, insofar as the record is concerned no plausible reason is suggested why the trial should or could not have taken place either before or after his return. It is therefore abundantly clear that the videotape of his testimony and its subsequent use at the trial against the defendant was solely for the personal convenience of Dr. Hirsch or the court and for no other reason whatsoever.
I consider that the resolution by the majority of the question of the admissibility of Dr. Hirsch’s videotaped testimony is constitutionally unsound. Their reliance on the principle that the “trial court must balance the right of the defendant to the right of confrontation and the need of the trier of fact to the additional benefit of having a particular witness testify in person at the trial with the extent of the need for the witness to be away at the time of trial” is unique in the annals of American constitutional law. No authority is cited for such a surprising doctrine. It is diametrically opposed to the repeated holdings of this Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. Certainly one can be in sympathy with Dr. Hirsch and his personal desire for a vacation, but concern for the convenience of a witness does not evoke the power to suspend the Constitution of the United States.
Second, it is not Reid’s position that videotaped testimony is different from testimony such as that taken at a preliminary hearing or a former trial. Where a transcript of testimony would be admitted under the customary rules of evidence, he does not argue that it should not have been admitted at this trial. The lucid statement of the Florida court in Hutchins v. Florida (Fla.App.) 286 So.2d 244, 246 (1973), is apropos:
“If the previously taken and preserved testimony of the witness, unable to be present was admissible at the trial, it has not been shown how its submission by video tape, as distinguished from a writ*32ten transcription of the questions and answers, resulted in harmful error.”
The question here is whether a witness should be required to be present at the trial so that the right of confrontation may be exercised personally in the presence of the jury trying the accused. The most recent statement of this Court was made in 1973 in State v. Briley, 109 Ariz. 74, 505 P.2d 245. There, we said:
“Ordinarily, the defendant must be given the opportunity to test the recollection and credibility of the witnesses against him in a face to face encounter before the jury. This Sixth Amendment right of confrontation in the Constitution is essential and fundamental, and has been made obligatory upon the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Citations omitted) 109 Ariz. at 75, 505 P.2d at 246.
One of the latest cases of the United States Supreme Court construing a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation is Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719, 88 S.Ct. 1318, 20 L.Ed.2d 255 (1968). It deals with the testimony of a witness who testified at a preliminary hearing but who was absent at the trial in these circumstances. Petitioner Barber was charged with robbery in Oklahoma. A co-defendant, Woods, testified at the preliminary hearing incriminating Barber. When .Barber was brought to trial, Woods was in a federal penitentiary in Texas, about 225 miles away. No attempt was made by the prosecution to bring Woods to the trial, but, rather, there was introduced a transcript of his testimony taken at the preliminary hearing. The Supreme Court of the United States emphasized that the objective of the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Federal Constitution is not only to safeguard the right of the cross-examination, but to prevent depositions from being used against a defendant in place of a personal examination at which the witness was compelled to stand face to face with the accused and the jurors to determine whether the witness was worthy of belief.
Traditionally there has been an exception to the requirement of confrontation where a witness is not available through no fault of the prosecution—that is, through death or having fled the jurisdiction. But the exception arises from necessity only. Where, as here and as in Barber v. Page, the State made absolutely no effort to obtain the presence of the witness at trial, the use of the substitute evidence cannot be condoned. True, it can be argued, videotape is better than the reading of a deposition or transcript of former testimony, but it is not the same as a personal confrontation. Something important may be lost in the process.
Nor should this defendant’s constitutional rights be dependent upon the answer to the question whether Dr. Hirsch was not really an important witness as the majority seem to suggest. In the United States in the past a defendant has had the right to confront his accusers and have the jurors confront them. If this is not to be so, then the time will soon arrive when criminal trials will be conducted by videotaped depositions for it is seldom convenient for the witnesses to be present at the trial.