Court Opinion

ID: 9704329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:30:56.747178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:00.488733
License: Public Domain

STEIN, J.,
dissenting.
New Jersey’s Rape Shield Law, N.J.S.A. 2C:14-7, was enacted primarily to protect sexual assault victims from cross-examination concerning prior sexual conduct that was intended to depict the victim as lacking in moral character and therefore likely to have consented to sexual activity with the accused. State v. Budis, 125 N.J. 519, 528-29, 593 A.2d 784 (1991). In this appeal, defendant, an Albanian refugee with minimal skills in the English language, was convicted of sexual assault despite his contention that his sexual contact with the victim was consensual. Defendant’s sexual assault convictions were substantially predicated on the testimony of the State’s expert psychologist who concluded that the victim, age thirty, lacked capacity to consent. In reaching that conclusion, the State’s expert relied in part on the victim’s accounts of her only two prior sexual encounters that had occurred approximately ten years earlier. Despite their obvious relevance, the trial court barred defense counsel from cross-examining the expert about his reliance on those two sexual encounters, mistakenly assuming that the vital interests protected by the Rape Shield *609Law would be compromised. In my view, the trial court’s application of the Rape Shield Law was erroneous because defense counsel’s proposed cross-examination of the State’s expert was not intended to suggest that the victim was promiscuous .or to impugn her morality. To the contrary, her minimal sexual experience was undisputed. The cross-examination was intended only to challenge the expert’s conclusion that the victim lacked the mental capacity to consent, the pivotal issue in the case. Nevertheless, the Court now sustains defendant’s convictions for sexual assault.
I would reverse defendant’s sexual assault convictions substantially for the reasons set forth in the dissent below. State v. Cuni 303 N.J.Super. 584, 611-13, 697 A.2d 550 (1997) (Pressler, J., dissenting). These supplemental observations address in greater detail my view of the Court’s severe application of the Rape Shield Law to sustain the lower court’s ruling, a ruling that prevented defense counsel from adequately cross-examining the State’s psychiatrist and thereby deprived defendant of his constitutional right of confrontation, U.S. Const. amend. VI; N.J. Const. art. 1, para. 10, which encompasses the right to cross-examine the State’s witnesses. Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 530-32, 593 A.2d 784.
I
Defendant, an Albanian refugee unskilled in English, described in the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center’s report as “mentally deficient,” and with an English vocabulary score at less than the first percentile, defended the sexual assault charges against him on the basis that he believed the victim, T.O., willingly participated in an act of sexual intercourse. The State’s psychologist, Dr. Anthony D’Urso, testified on direct examination that the thirty-year-old victim’s mental retardation rendered her incapable of exercising the right to refuse sexual relations, notwithstanding that he observed her to be knowledgeable about sexual activity.
As the Appellate Division noted, however, Dr. D’Urso admitted that T.O.’s ability to express herself exceeded her mental condition. He said that based on the way she communicated with other *610people, “she comes across as having a higher level of ability than her test score would support.” He conceded that her “language skills belie the fact that she’s’ mentally retarded.” 303 N.J.Super. at 605, 697 A.2d 550. Defendant’s expert agreed with that assessment:
Q. What did you find her verbal skills to be?
A. [T.O.] was very fluent, very spontaneous!,] spoke! ] in complete sentences. She was engaging — she had a sense of humor. She responded fully and openly to everything I asked her. She appeared very relaxed. She came across as more verbal than the scores would have led me to believe. If I only had her scores, in other words, and didn’t see her I would have expected less verbal [ lability than.I actually saw. She conversed very fluently.
The confrontation issue concerned the victim’s only two prior sexual experiences, both occurring about ten years prior to the incident at issue, which she had described to Dr. D’Urso and about which he testified in camera at trial. Ante at 592-95, 733 A.2d at 418-20.
Defense counsel attempted to cross-examine Dr. D’Urso concerning those incidents. Unquestionably, the purpose and intended scope of that cross-examination did not infringe on the important interests protected by the Rape Shield Law: the victim’s limited sexual activity (two prior experiences in thirty years) obviated any attempt to establish consent based on promiscuity, nor was the cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso calculated to embarrass the victim or invade her privacy. See Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 528-30, 593 A.2d 784. Its sole purpose was to permit defense counsel to challenge Dr. D’Urso’s testimony — indispensable to the State’s case — that, the victim lacked the capacity to consent. Notwithstanding the Court’s conclusion that the evidence lacked relevancy or could confuse the jury, ante at 601-03, 604-05, 733 A.2d at 423-25, 425-26, the victim’s description to the State’s expert of the circumstances surrounding her only two prior sexual encounters provided defense counsel with the most realistic opportunity during the entire trial to challenge the State’s expert’s conclusion that the victim could not consent to sexual activity.
*611The Court attempts to justify preclusion of the cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso partially on the basis of defense counsel’s failure to apply “before the trial or preliminary hearing” to the trial court for an order to permit admission of evidence of the victim’s prior sexual conduct. N.J.S.A. 2C:14-7(a). The Court concludes that the remedy for noncompliance with that statutory requirement is preclusion, ante at 598-99, 733 A.2d at 422, noting that the only exception to the statute’s procedural mandate is for “newly discovered [evidence that] could not have been obtained earlier through the exercise of due diligence.” Ante at 597, 733 A.2d at 421 (alteration in original). Nevertheless, citing Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 153, 111 S.Ct. 1743, 1748, 114 L. Ed.2d 205, 214-15 (1991), the Court acknowledges that the Rape Shield Law must be construed to permit a trial court to waive the procedural bar if in a given case preclusion would violate a defendant’s constitutional right of confrontation. Ante at 598, 733 A.2d at 422. The Court concludes, however, that preclusion was the appropriate remedy for the procedural violation because introduction of that evidence in mid-trial without prior notice “blindsided the State.” Ante at 599, 733 A.2d at 422.
I suggest that the Court’s characterization is excessive, because the critical issue throughout the trial was the victim’s capacity to consent to intercourse. In view of Dr. D’Urso’s report and testimony that the victim lacked capacity to refuse, that report’s reference to the victim’s two prior sexual experiences was an obvious target of defense counsel’s cross-examination, and was no less obvious because of defense counsel’s procedural slip. The correctness of the remedy of preclusion cannot stand or fall on the basis of the statute’s procedural requirement, but ultimately must be determined on the basis of defendant’s constitutional right of confrontation. See Michigan v. Lucas, supra, 500 U.S. at 153, 111 S.Ct. at 1748, 114 L.Ed.2d at 215 (‘We leave it to the Michigan courts to address in the first instance whether Michigan’s rape-shield statute authorizes preclusion and whether, on the facts of *612this case, preclusion violated Lucas’ rights under the Sixth Amendment.”).
In Budis, supra, we indicated that the reconciliation of the interests protected by the Rape Shield Law with those advanced by the constitutional right of confrontation depended on a balancing of the prejudicial effect and the probative value of the challenged evidence. We noted that
[t]he Rape Shield Statute directs trial courts to consider whether evidence of prior sexual conduct will “create undue prejudice, confusion of the issues, or unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the victim.” N.J.S.A. 20:14-7. Similarly, the confrontation clause does not compel the admission of evidence that will prejudice the victim, jeopardize her safety, or confuse the jury.
[Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 538, 593 A.2d 784.]
The significant interests protected by the Rape Shield Law are material to any fair assessment of whether substantial prejudice to the victim would result from any of defense counsel’s proposed cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso. The salutary purpose of the statute is to protect a rape victim from any interrogation about her prior sexual experiences when that interrogation is intended to suggest that her sexual contact with the accused was probably consensual:
Before revisions to rape shield laws were made, a victim’s past sexual history was admissible in evidence to impeach her credibility or to show, based on these past sexual acts, that it was probable that she consented to the act. It was society’s assumption that a woman who had consented to sex in the past more than likely consented to sex during this act. As a result of these unwarranted and overly simplistic assumptions, reformers sought to enact rape shield laws to protect the victim from this scrutiny.
[Shacara Boone, New Jersey Rape Shield Legislation: From Past to Present— The Pros and Cons, 17 Women’s Rts. L. Rep. 223, 224 (1996) (footnotes omitted).]
We expressed similar observations about our rape-shield statute in Budis:
Those laws represent a legislative response to the common law rule permitting cross-examination of a rape victim about her prior sexual conduct. Such conduct was traditionally considered evidence of the victim’s inclination to consent to sexual intercourse and of her lack of moral character and credibility. Because of the “character assassination” of the victim, rape trials sometimes degenerated to embarrassing invasions of the victim’s privacy.
*613One of the primary purposes of the statutes is to protect rape victims from excessive cross-examination, thereby encouraging them to report the abuse. The statutes also guard against the improper use of evidence of the victim’s prior sexual experience. Thus, in addition to protecting victims of sexual assault, rape-shield statutes preserve the integrity of trials. By ensuring that juries will not base their verdicts on prejudice against the victim, the statutes enhance the reliability of the criminal justice system.
[Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 528-29, 593 A.2d 784 (citations omitted).]
Fairly read, this record demonstrates that none of the interests underlying the enactment of the Rape Shield Law were significantly implicated by defense counsel’s proposed cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso. The interest in “protecting] rape victims from excessive cross-examination,” Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 529, 593 A.2d 784, is not implicated because defense counsel intended only to cross-examine Dr. D’Urso. See Tague v. Richards, 3 F.3d 1133, 1139 (7th Cir.1993) (“The degree to which A.T. would have been forced to relive this offensive conduct was ameliorated by the fact that she was not the witness being questioned regarding the incident.”). The interest in protecting a victim from an accused’s attempt to prove her lack of moral character and inclination to consent on the basis of prior sexual conduct is simply not compromised by the proposed cross-examination. The victim’s only prior sexual experiences occurred ten years ago. If anything, they demonstrated the victim’s lack of interest in sexual contact and established not that she was promiscuous but that her sexual experience was minimal. The question to be pursued by the proposed cross-examination did not concern the victim’s inclination to consent, but rather her mental capacity to consent. The protections that the Rape Shield Law were intended to provide simply were not implicated by the proposed cross-examination.
The Court insists that the Rape Shield Law “was designed to protect the privacy and dignity of the victims of sexual crimes,” ante at 606, 733 A.2d at 426, a “victim[] who [is] mentally challenged ... should not have to forfeit the protections of the Rape Shield Law because an expert must explain her mental condition.” Ante at 607, 733 A.2d at 426. The Court’s rhetoric obscures the issue. No one disputes that vulnerable victims are *614equally deserving of the protections of the Rape Shield Law. But those protections were designed to shield victims from cross-examination about prior sexual experiences designed to show inclination to consent — not capacity to consent. The “capacity” issue, dominated this trial because the State offered no evidence of force or coercion. The proposed cross-examination was not intended to embarrass the victim or invade her privacy, and the victim was not the witness to be cross-examined. Rather, the object of the cross-examination was the State’s expert, who offered the crucial opinion concerning T.O.’s capacity to consent to sexual activity, and who relied on her prior experiences in formulating that opinion. Surely, the victim’s privacy interest in avoiding that cross-examination is limited and attenuated.
Because the prejudice to the victim from the proposed cross-examination was minimal, the probative value of the proposed cross-examination need not be overwhelming to sustain defendant’s constitutional right to adduce that testimony. The Court, however, misperceives the purpose of the expert’s cross-examination, observing that “[tjhere is no indication that T.O. was not a willing participant in either [prior] sexual encounter---- These prior incidents, therefore, do not tend to prove that T.O. had the ability to exercise consent.” Ante at 602, 733 A.2d at 424.
Taking into account the context in which the issue of relevance arose, the Court’s conclusion is flawed. The prior incidents, in isolation, may not demonstrate T.O.’s present capacity to consent to sexual activity. Their relevance, however, derives from the fact that the State’s only expert witness relied on T.O.’s current account of those incidents in reaching his conclusion that she lacked the capacity to withhold consent. Both the State’s and defendant’s psychological experts conducted examinations of the victim in order to assess her capacity to consent to sexual activity. Both experts questioned the victim about her two prior sexual experiences, but their respective accounts of her description of *615those events differed sharply. The Court’s opinion includes portions of the reports of both experts, and defendant’s expert’s account fairly can be characterized as describing the victim as a voluntary participant in both encounters, in marked contrast to the account contained in the State’s expert’s report. Ante at 593-94 n. 3, 733 A.2d at 419 n. 3. Dr. D’Urso’s report clearly indicated that he took into account the victim’s report of her prior sexual experiences in determining that she lacked the capacity to withhold consent. When questioned by the trial court in camera about whether he relied on her description of her two prior sexual experiences to reach a conclusion about .her capacity to consent, Dr. D’Urso replied:
[T]he answer is yes. What weight it had, probably no more important or less important than any other example of how she deals with stress in her life. But it’s one piece that this does have that nothing else has is obviously her knowledge of sexuality.
Accordingly, contrary to the Court’s implication, the focus of the proposed cross-examination was not on whether T.O.’s prior sexual experiences were consensual, but rather on the soundness of the conclusion reached by Dr. D’Urso in reliance on those experiences. Defense counsel also stressed the unique significance of the evidence relating to the victim’s only two prior sexual experiences in the course of in camera argument to the trial court:
I submit, Your Honor, that the State’s case is almost entirely if not entirely predicated upon a psychological finding of defectiveness under the [C]ode. That’s the whole State’s case, Judge. There’s no other evidence that I think would sustain a conviction in this case. If I am not allowed to examine the doctor on the factors that made up his opinion, his diagnosis as it will then, Judge, I’m [e]ffectively barred from cross-examining or from attacking that conclusion. What Your Honor is going to be saying to me is that you can ask him everything but perhaps the most important aspect of this particular case whether this girl has, could, would be able to consent to a sexual act or would be able to resist or repel that sexual act.
In State v. Olivio, 123 N.J. 550, 564, 589 A.2d 597 (1991), this Court held that for purposes of prosecutions under N.J.S.A. 2C:14-2e(2) a person is mentally defective “if, at the time of the sexual activity, the mental defect rendered him or her unable to comprehend the distinctively sexual nature of the conduct, or *616incapable of understanding or exercising the right to refuse to engage in such conduct with another.” We also held that the statute “imposes criminal liability only if the defendant ‘knew or should have known’ that the complainant was mentally defective.” Id. at 568, 589 A.2d 597. Accordingly, Dr. D’Urso’s opinion that the victim was incapable of exercising the right to consent or to refuse to engage in sexual activity was crucial to the State’s case, and obviously was a primary factor in the jury’s decision to convict defendant. Moreover, the expert’s assurance — or lack of assurance — about the correctness of his conclusion obviously would bear on the jury’s consideration of whether defendant knew or should have known that the victim’s capacity to consent may have been impaired. Because defendant’s English language skills were minimal, the strength or vulnerability of the expert’s conclusions about the victim could have been the decisive factor in the jury’s determination of defendant’s culpability. Accordingly, an intense and comprehensive cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso was essential to the defense case.
That an expert ordinarily is subject to cross-examination concerning the facts underlying his opinion is incontrovertible. See N.J.RE. 705 (“The expert may testify in terms of opinion or inference and give reasons therefor without prior disclosure of the underlying facts or data, unless the court requires otherwise. The expert may in any event be required to disclose the underlying facts or data on cross-examination.”) (emphasis added); see also State v. Martini, 131 N.J. 176, 264, 619 A.2d 1208 (1993) (“ ‘[A]n expert witness is always subject to searching cross-examination as to the basis of his opinion.’ To determine the credibility, weight and probative value of an expert’s opinion, one must question the facts and reasoning on which it is based.”) (quoting Glenpointe Assoc, v. Township of Teaneck, 241 N.J.Super. 37, 54, 574 A.2d 459 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 122 N.J. 391, 585 A.2d 392 (1990)); State v. Clowney, 299 N.J.Super. 1, 19, 690 A.2d 612 (App.Div.) (“Thus, by its very premise for admissibility, its esoteric, abstruse, and especial nature, expert testimony and opinion are subjects for legitimately expansive cross-examination if a jury is to be enabled *617to assess their soundness.”), certif. denied, 151 N.J. 77, 697 A.2d 549 (1997).
The trial court not only barred defense counsel from cross-examining Dr. D’Urso about his reliance on the victim’s prior sexual experiences, but it also precluded defense counsel from questioning defendant’s own psychological expert on the extent to which his opinion about the victim’s ability to engage in consensual sexual activity was influenced by her own description to him of her two prior sexual encounters.
II
On that issue most critical to ’a determination of defendant’s guilt or innocence of sexual assault — the victim’s capacity to consent — cross-examination of the State’s sole expert witness testifying on that issue could not constitutionally be restricted unless the interests protected by the Rape Shield Law were at risk. In fact, those interests were implicated only remotely by the proposed cross-examination. The potential probative value of that cross-examination, given the sharply contradicting evidence concerning the victim’s capacity to consent, overshadowed any possible prejudicial effect. The vital interests underlying the Rape Shield Law are subverted if they are misapplied and misused to deny defendants a full and fair trial.
Applying the standard we espoused in Budis, supra, 125 N.J. at 532, 593 A.2d 784, I would hold that the probative value of the proffered cross-examination of Dr. D’Urso far outweighed any conceivable prejudice to the victim, and that the trial court’s ruling that precluded such cross-examination constituted prejudicial and reversible error. Accordingly, I would reverse defendant’s sexual assault convictions.
Chief Justice PORITZ and Justice COLEMAN join in this opinion.
*618For affirmance — Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN and GARIBALDI — 4.
For reversal — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices STEIN and COLEMAN — 3.