Court Opinion

ID: 9782022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:50:33.639517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:44.464010
License: Public Domain

COATS, Chief Judge,
concurring.
This case raises the issue of whether a defendant in a sexual assault case can present evidence that the person who is accusing him of the sexual assault has made a prior false claim of sexual assault.
If a sexual assault victim has previously falsely accused another person of sexually assaulting her, this evidence can be probative to call the current accusation into question. This is why, if the prior false accusation can be proven, it is generally admissible.1 But in the real world, unless the alleged victim admits the false prior accusation, it is frequently difficult to establish that the alleged victim has previously made a false accusation. We would expect someone who is accused of sexual assault to deny that the sexual assault occurred. Even if the prior sexual assault went to trial and the defendant was acquitted, all this proves is that the jury had a reasonable doubt that the sexual assault occurred. It does not prove that the defendant was factually innocent or the alleged victim made a false accusation. Therefore, cases such as Covington v. State,2 place a substantial burden on the defendant who wishes to establish that the alleged victim has made a prior false accusation. The evidence in support of the contention that the alleged victim made a prior false accusation raises the spe¢-ter that the trial court could be faced with trying another sexual assault case within the current sexual assault trial In my view, cases such as Covington reflect the policy embodied in Alaska Evidence Rule 403 (that courts should not admit evidence unless the probative value of the evidence outweighs the danger of unfair prejudice). In many instances, evidence that the victim has previously made a false charge of a sexual assault will be inconclusive and probative value of this evidence will generally be outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.
But Morgan's case departs from the general problem courts face when a defendant offers to present evidence that an alleged victim has made a prior false accusation of sexual assault. In this case, the alleged victim, TF., admitted that she had consensual intercourse with R.R. and C.B. She testified that she never accused these two men of sexually assaulting her and admitted that if she reported that RR. and C.B. had sexually assaulted her, those statements would be false. Morgan wanted to present the testimony of four witnesses who would testify *341that T.F. had made statements that R.R. and C.B. had sexually assaulted her.
According to Morgan's offer of proof, the prior acts of intercourse and the allegedly false charges occurred within a few months of the current charges. So, if T.F. made the false statements, the statements were relatively contemporaneous with her report that Morgan sexually assaulted her.
If TF. falsely accused others of sexual assault within a few months of the current incident, this evidence would be probative in evaluating T.F.'s credibility. And, this case does not raise the difficult problems that occur when an alleged victim claims that she was previously sexually assaulted and the perpetrator denies that the assault occurred. Here, T.F. concedes that she was not sexually assaulted. The only question is whether she made the false accusations.
It is certainly not clear whether T.F. made prior false allegations of- sexual assault. The State argues that Morgan's witnesses were friends of his and that they were lying. But whether Morgan's witnesses were credible or not is the kind of question that fact finders deal with on a regular basis. And, because this case was a bench trial, I fail to see how allowing Morgan to present this evidence could be unduly prejudicial.
Accordingly, I concur that we should remand the case fo Judge Jahnke. On remand, Morgan should be permitted to present his evidence that T.F. had previously made false accusations of sexual assault. Judge Jahnke should then reevaluate the evidence in the case and redetermine his verdict.

. See Covington v. State, 703 P.2d 436, 441-42 (Alaska App.1985).

. 703 P.2d 436.