Court Opinion

ID: 9685728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:58:49.852955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:09.786559
License: Public Domain

SABERS, Justice
(concurring specially).
I generally concur with the majority opinion, but I am concerned with the treatment in Section II of hearsay evidence as harmless error. The opinion states:
Even though the ruling was erroneous, Reimers’ testimony was merely cumulative to all other testimony at trial. In State v. Fender, 358 N.W.2d 248 (S.D.1984) we expressed: “We also note that when evidence admitted at trial is cumulative only and other admissible evidence supports conviction, the cumulative evidence though inadmissible is not prejudicial.” Id. at 254. Kenley’s hearsay statement to Reimers was no different than Kenley’s testimony to the jury. Therefore, we do not recognize Reimers’ testimony as being prejudicial.
I have two concerns with this paragraph: 1) it too casually concludes that the admission of evidence was harmless because it was cumulative; and 2) the challenged testimony was not simply for purposes of identification, but also bolstered the credibility of the victim.
1. My first concern stems from the majority opinion’s approach to the problem that seems to shift the analysis from one which considers the effect the error had on the verdict to considering the sufficiency of the evidence properly admitted. As a result, the analysis applied to the problem is incomplete. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has clearly expressed my concern in this regard in its opinion in State v. Billings, 110 Wis.2d 661, 329 N.W.2d 192 (1983). In that case, the court was faced with an appeal by a defendant who claimed that evidence had been improperly admitted at trial. The state argued that if the evidence was improperly admitted, it was duplicative of properly admitted evidence, thus the error was harmless. The court explained the inquiry it must make in such a situation:
*842Courts must make an inquiry into the nature of all of the evidence that the jury heard to assess whether an error in admitting certain evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The impact of the erroneously admitted evidence on the jurors cannot be assessed either by looking at the erroneously admitted evidence in isolation or by looking at the evidence unaffected by the error (hereafter referred to as “untainted evidence”) in isolation to determine whether it is sufficient to support the conviction. The court cannot, as the United States Supreme Court has admonished, give too much emphasis to “overwhelming evidence” of guilt. Chapman [v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 23, 87 S.Ct. 824, 827, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710 (1967)]. Emphasizing the sufficiency of untainted evidence independently of the erroneously admitted evidence creates a danger of substituting the court’s judgment for the jury’s. Rather, the court must inquire whether on the basis of all the evidence there is a “reasonable possibility” that the constitutional error “might have contributed to the conviction.”
Id. at 195. When the basis for claiming harmless error is that the evidence is cumulative, a court’s inquiry must ask more than whether duplicative evidence exists:
A court’s inquiry as to harmlessness does not end with its determination that the erroneously admitted evidence duplicates the untainted evidence. Regardless of the duplicative nature of the erroneously admitted evidence, the record in the particular case might reveal that the admission of the evidence was or was not prejudicial. In some cases the jury may not have been persuaded of the defendant’s guilt had it not been presented with the erroneously admitted duplicative evidence. Conversely, in other cases although the erroneously admitted evidence is not duplicative, it could be clear to the court that the evidence had no impact on the conviction.
Id. at 196. In summary, the majority opinion’s error is that it fails to consider the impact of the erroneously admitted evidence on the jury’s verdict. Would the jury have been convinced of Younger’s guilt without the hearsay testimony?
2. My second concern flows from the first. By failing to consider the impact of the erroneously admitted evidence, the majority opinion focuses only upon the challenged testimony as identification testimony. However, this improperly admitted testimony had a greater impact and was more than mere identification. The primary effect of the testimony was to bolster the credibility of the victim. The testimony of a victim’s daughter that her mother broke down and told her who committed the crime is powerful evidence to present to a jury. The question we must ask is what impact did the admission of that testimony have upon the jury’s verdict. Can we say beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have returned the same verdict if they had not heard that testimony? In fact, such analysis was employed by this court in Fender, supra. The quote from Fender as used by the majority oversimplifies the analysis that opinion requires. The Fender court affirmed the admission of the challenged evidence because it was obvious to the court that the evidence “did not contribute to the jury’s verdict.” Id. at 254.