Court Opinion

ID: 9491940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:28:16.642567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:42.648714
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
with whom McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, joins dissenting.
I dissent from the court’s holding in Part IIB that the admission of DiMaio’s testimony did not violate the Confrontation Clause.
The record demonstrates that Barrett’s confrontation claim was fairly presented to the state court and that there was no procedural default. Cross-examination is essential to Barrett’s Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. See, e.g., Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U.S. 730, 736, 107 S.Ct. 2658, 96 L.Ed.2d 631 (1987). Barrett’s specific and repeated complaint that DiMaio’s testimony was not subject to the test and protections of cross-examination alerted the state court to Barrett’s federal constitutional right to confront and cross-examine his accusers. See Morrow v. Wyrick, 646 F.2d 1229, 1232 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 899, 102 S.Ct. 401, 70 L.Ed.2d 216 (1981); Hutchins v. Wainwright, 715 F.2d 512, 518-19 (11th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1071, 104 S.Ct. 1427, 79 L.Ed.2d 751 (1984). The Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling that the testimony violated Barrett’s right to cross-examination, see State v. Barrett, 445 N.W.2d 749, 754, 758 (Iowa 1989), establishes that Barrett fairly presented the issue to the state court. See Abdullah v. Groose, 75 F.3d 408, 411-12 (8th Cir.) cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1215, 116 S.Ct. 1838, 134 L.Ed.2d 941 (1996). Barrett’s Sixth Amendment claim is not proeedurally defaulted.
DiMaio’s testimony constituted hearsay in violation of Barrett’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. When the court today reaches the claim of the confrontation clause violation, it engages in what can most charitably be described as a circular analysis. The court first assumes that the Iowa Supreme Court determined DiMaio’s answer to be a recitation of hearsay. It then recognizes that in Iowa, hearsay is ordinarily an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It then concludes that the statement was offered to reveal DiMaio’s state of mind which would not be hearsay, and thus raises no confrontation clause concerns. The court’s reading of DiMaio’s testimony is contrary to that of the Iowa Supreme Court and the arguments asserted by the Attorney General of Iowa. In order to develop its reasoning, the court dissects DiMaio’s statement into three possible meanings, which is two more meanings than have been asserted before either by the Iowa court or the Attorney General. When it must engage in such a creative enterprise it deals a fatal blow to its holding.
*1170The Supreme Court of Iowa in State v. Barrett refers to Barrett’s hearsay objection and discusses Iowa cases in which one expert testified that his opinion was confirmed by another expert. 445 N.W.2d 749, 751 (Iowa 1989). The court identified this type of testimony as “indirect or obscured hearsay.” Id. The court considered whether Rule 703, which allows an expert to rely on “facts or data” in forming his opinion, allowed ah expert to state that other experts also subscribed to the expert’s stated conclusions. Id. The court emphasized that Rule 703 did not overrule State v. Judkins, 242 N.W.2d 266 (Iowa 1976), and did not empower one expert witness to state other experts also subscribed to the witness’s stated conclusion. Id. It rejected the argument that DiMaio’s testimony could be allowed under Rule 703 because there was no foundation testimony showing that the opinion of DiMaio’s colleagues was the type of “fact or data” reasonably relied on by similar experts.15 Id. The court made clear that it “agree[d] with [Barrett’s] challenge to the testimony,” and that it was “inclined to disapprove” DiMaio’s testimony. Id.
When the Iowa court reached the question of prejudicial error, the court again referred to the hearsay evidence rule and considered the defense argument that DiMaio’s testimony amounted to testimony that his conclusion was endorsed by his unnamed colleagues, allowing the State, by the challenged testimony, to counter Barrett’s array of expert witnesses before the jury without producing their experts for cross-examination. 445 N.W.2d at 754. Further, Justice Lavorato, joined by two other justices in dissent, made abundantly clear that the Iowa Supreme Court’s discussion of the issue correctly defined what Iowa courts frequently refer to as the “fighting issue,” namely, the shoring up of testimony by soliciting hearsay testimony of the opinions of other experts. Justice Lavorato concluded: “[t]he evfl in such’ a procedure, of course, lay in the defendant’s inability to challenge these opinions through cross-examination.” Id. at 758.
Thus, it is evident that the Iowa Supreme Court was considering an issue entirely different from the hair split by the court today. The justices of the Iowa Supreme Court, both in the majority and the dissent, found only one meaning springing from the testimony in question. Nevertheless, to reach its conclusion, the court dissects the testimony into two additional slices, neither of which has occurred to anyone dealing with this case in the state courts, or even to counsel appearing before this court. The court simply blinks semantic reality in reaching out for the conclusion it rationalizes today. I think we must consider the testimony as it was considered by the Iowa Supreme Court. DiMaio’s answer “no” to the question of whether any of his colleagues had given him persuasive reason to disregard his opinion that Willits’s death was a homicide, as opposed to a suicide, carried the evident meaning that other experts, who were not produced for cross-examination, agreed with and bolstered DiMaio’s opinion and constituted inadmissible hearsay.
DiMaio’s testimony was not harmless. See O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435, 115 S.Ct. 992, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995). DiMaio’s hearsay statement was relevant to perhaps the most crucial issue at trial: whether Wil-lits was murdered, as the State contends, or committed suicide, as Barrett asserts. The statement was made on redirect examination and was obviously intended to bolster DiMaio’s opinion that Willits had been murdered. In effect, DiMaio was telling the jury, “All of my colleagues agree with me that she was murdered.” Through these unidentified witnesses — whether two or a dozen — the State presented to the jury evidence damaging to Barrett on a crucial issue and bypassed the constitutional safeguards designed to test the reliability of evidence and bring the truth to light.
Without the opportunity to confront and cross-examine DiMaio’s colleagues, Barrett was unable to examine and challenge their theories, assumptions, tests, qualifications, *1171credibility, or any other factor relevant to the weight of this evidence. Barrett was deprived of the “opportunity, not only of testing the recollection and sifting the conscience of the witness, but of compelling him to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.” Mattox v. United, States, 156 U.S. 237, 242-43, 15 S.Ct. 337, 339, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895).
Of course, we cannot know how much weight the jury assigned to this evidence. But given the importance of this issue to the verdict, the importance of expert testimony to this issue, Barrett’s complete lack of opportunity to confront and cross-examine these unidentified accusers, and the State’s failure to demonstrate that this evidence had any particularized guarantee of trustworthiness, I conclude that this error was not harmless. I note that both the district court and three dissenting judges of the Supreme Court of Iowa took the view that “such unchallenged opinions on a critical issue served to tip the scales in favor of the State in a case that was obviously close.” 445 N.W.2d at 758.
I would hold that the admission of DiMaio’s hearsay testimony violated Barrett’s Sixth Amendment right of confrontation, and I would grant the writ of habeas corpus.

. The court today decides that DiMaio's testimony does not violate the Confrontation Clause because the statement is inherently reliable. The court reaches this conclusion by relying on Rule 703. Nevertheless, the court does not identify the "particularized guarantees of trust-worthiness," or explain the foundation for the testimony. Instead, the court boldly assumes the statement was reliable because DiMaio relied on it, in a seething "I know it when I see it” approach.