Court Opinion

ID: 9711931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:42:18.596885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:08.452871
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
My difference with the Court relates to the evidentiary ruling at issue in Part IV of the majority opinion. Pick had a conversation with appellant which Stuckey overheard. Pick testified for the prosecution regarding his recollection of what was said in that conversation. Stuckey was later called by the defense to give his version of what was said by Pick and appellant in that same conversation. His version differed from Pick's. Under similar cireumstances we recently held that where the content of an out-of-court statement was taken up with the out-of-court asserter during her testimony at trial, she would be deemed to be available for full and effective cross-examination of the basis of the out-of-court statement, when at a later point in the trial a differing version of the same statement was offered. Lowery v. State, (1982) Ind., 434 N.E.2d 868, (Givan, C.J., and Pivarnik, J., dissenting on a different point.). Here, Pick testified that appellant removed the stolen tools from the car and placed them in the garage, and that he, Pick, did not touch them. He testified that at the time they talked about the tools, that appellant said he liked tools, and that the subject of appellant's lost bird dog came up. Pick then testified that he could remember no more about the conversation. The prosecutor was permitted to treat Pick, his own witness, as a hostile witness. As I see it, the interest of the prosecution here to be served by cross-examining Pick had already been adequately served, when the court sustained the objection to the testimony of Stuckey on hearsay grounds, and therefore the court was in error in the ruling.
The majority concludes that no harm could have resulted from the exclusion of the oral testimony of Stuckey, because its substance in the form of an affidavit was admitted during his cross-examination by the prosecution. I do not agree. That affidavit was prepared by defense counsel at his office, and contained at least one gross error. The affidavit would be very weak in its persuasive force when compared to Stuckey's in-court testimony under oath that Pick had asked appellant to permit him to store these tools in appellant's garage since his dad wanted him to get them out of the barn. I would grant appellant a new trial, and require that Stuckey be permitted to testify outright as to what he heard Pick say at the time.