Court Opinion

ID: 9497314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:48:12.051621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:07.224226
License: Public Domain

*1061BYE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
With due respect, I dissent from that part of the court’s judgment concluding Mr. Medearis was not substantially prejudiced by the district court’s refusal to admit the letter to impeach Ms. Whiting’s testimony on cross examination.
The majority takes an all-too-myopic view of the impeachment process. True, the letter would have been cumulative to the extent it impeached certain details of Ms. Whiting’s testimony, such as her fear of losing Mr. Medearis to another woman. But, if written after the assault, the letter’s competence to impeach such testimony is dwarfed by its power to undermine Ms. Whiting’s ultimate statements — ’that she was taken against her will from her cousin’s home, physically and psychologically abused, and then forcibly raped by Mr. Medearis. Well versed in the subtleties of the rules of evidence, we may be able to so isolate each statement in the letter as to minimize the letter’s overall power to impeach. But I cannot believe a jury of Mr. Medearis’s peers, taking a common-sense view of the matter, would not have wondered how Ms. Whiting, in so effusive a letter, could have vowed her lasting love for, and expressed her dread of losing, the man she had recently accused of sexual assault against her person.
Because I cannot say the jury would have been unaffected by such impeachment evidence, I must conclude the district court’s error worked substantial prejudice upon the defense and therefore was not harmless. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.