Court Opinion

ID: 9662219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:03:25.998148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:37.857002
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(concurring).
The majority has found the trial judge’s ruling to which Bill of Exception No. 2 was taken to be correct. With this I cannot agree. According to the judge’s per curiam the witness Partee was either a participant in the crime charged or an eyewitness to the crime and therefore “a key witness” for the State. A statement taken from Partee by the defense’s investigator a few weeks before the trial purported to detail all of the activities in which he was engaged during the entire evening and night of the robbery, including the precise time of the robbery; this statement did not mention that he had been with the defendant during a robbery or had observed a robbery. On the witness stand, however, Partee described the robbery in detail. He stated that he was with the defendant all that evening, that between 7:45 and 8:00 o’clock he saw the defendant place a knife to the victim’s neck and rob him of money.
When counsel for the defendant on cross-examination tried to read the prior statement to the witness Partee, the trial court ruled that the statement was not a “prior inconsistent statement”, and would not allow it to be read to the witness. Counsel for defendant reserved his bill of exception.
If a witness has given a detailed statement of his activities during a particular period of time but has omitted any reference *991to seeing or participating in a robbery, and then on the witness stand he describes in detail a robbery committed at knifepoint during that same period, these two statements are inconsistent.
Acknowledgment by a witness that he made a certain statement contained on a piece of paper, the contents of which were not divulged to the jury, fails to impart to the jury a prior inconsistency or contradiction or to present an attack upon the credibility of the witness. This defendant was entitled to have the prior inconsistent statement in its totality read to the witness so that he might admit or deny having made the statement. These inconsistencies are pertinent to the guilt or innocence of the defendant since the statement tends to provide him an alibi while the testimony identifies him as the perpetrator of the crime and relates all the elements necessary for a conviction. One of these two statements is a lie. It was the exclusive province of the jury to weigh the prior statement and the testimony in the light of the details and the surrounding circumstances of each, in order to assess the credibility of the witness and determine the truth or falseness of his testimony. The exclusion of the prior statement would thus constitute prejudicial, reversible error.
However, with the persistence of counsel aiid the vacillation of the trial court in its rulings, the witness later adinitted in the jury’s presence that he had in fact-made a statement which detailed his activities on the evening of the crime but which did not mention the robbery. The defendant, then, to some extent produced before the jury the witness’s acknowledgment of a prior inconsistent statement. Moreover, the examination of the investigator to whom the statement was given revealed that the prior statement did not contain a mention of the robbery. Thxts, in the light of the admission of the witness and the testimony of the investigator, the defendant has not shown prejudice because of his inability to produce before the jury the entire prior inconsistent statement.
While the error is grave, the prejudice has been counteracted or removed by the later testimony, and I therefore concur.