Court Opinion

ID: 9710406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:09:07.802867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:56.607334
License: Public Domain

DAY, J.
{dissenting). I dissent. Contrary to the conclusion set out by the majority, the "real controversy” in this case was "fully tried” and the decision to grant a new trial is unwarranted. The majority states:
"Upon reading the record we conclude that the case hinged on false and inadmissible testimony about the complainant’s lack of prior sexual experience. When consent is a determinative issue in a rape trial and the jury’s decision on consent turns on testimony about the complainant’s lack of prior sexual experience which is both false and inadmissible under the rape shield law, the jury is rendered unable to evaluate the testimony of the complainant and the defendant — whose credibility were the crucial aspects of the trial — because inadmissible, highly prejudicial and false evidence pervaded the course of the trial.” (Majority opinion, at 586 (footnote omitted).
It is clear that when the charge of second-degree sexual assault under sec. 940.225(2)(b), Stats., was amended to a charge of third-degree sexual assault under sec. 940.225(3), the evidence of the victim’s lack of prior sexual experience became inadmissible. As noted by the State in its brief to this court, at this point:
"Defense counsel could have had the trial court expressly and specifically instruct the jury that it was no longer to consider the virginity evidence on the remaining charges of third-degree sexual assault. Defense counsel never requested such instruction, but rather was content with the *591court’s ambiguous direction to the jury to disregard all evidence 'which bore on the subject of whether or not the defendant caused a disease of a sexual or reproductive organ.’”
I agree with the State that defense counsel elected to forego such a request because counsel intended to rely on such evidence. The tack taken by defense counsel was, as the State asserts, to argue that the victim’s self-image, incorporating proscriptions against premarital sex, "led [her] to believe, though it was not in fact true, that she had not consented to the intercourse, for consensual intercourse would have been alien to her character and standards_” The majority is overreaching when it, on its own initiative, relies on the first branch of sec. 751.06, to reverse a conviction in the interest of justice.
The issues raised as to the victim’s prior sexual experience were raised by the Defendant before sentencing. The facts as to prior incestuous experience were brought out in an interview by a social worker (an agent from the Bureau of Community Corrections) doing a presentence investigation in this case. When asked by the social worker she volunteered the fact of some type of incestuous relationship. The social worker and the prosecutor were both convinced and so advised the trial court that she did not intentionally lie or conceal what had occurred within her family. Whether she suppressed it or regarded it outside the purview of the questions she was asked at trial it is clear it in no way altered, changed or impugned her testimony as to what went on between her and the Defendant. The trial judge did not feel that her testimony or credibility was impugned. He also made it clear on the record that in view of all the testimony *592in the case, including that of her roommate and others, plus the inconsistencies in the Defendant’s testimony, that a different result would not be obtained in a new trial.
This reversal by the majority "in the interests of justice” achieves the opposite result. It results in an injustice. This young woman is first victimized by the incestuous activity in her family and now is victimized by the Defendant whose long criminal record was recited by the judge before passing sentence.
In the "interest of justice,” I dissent.,
I am authorized to state that JUSTICE LOUIS J. CECI joins this dissenting opinion.