Court Opinion

ID: 9668496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:16:31.174256+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:04.559008
License: Public Domain

W. J. Giovan, J.
(dissenting). In my view the rape-shield statute does not bar evidence of the complainant’s sexual conduct with the defendant that occurred after the date of the alleged assault.
The majority says that the plain meaning of the applicable exception1 ("Evidence of the victim’s past sexual conduct with the actor.”) is that the questioned evidence is not part of the exception. If the plain meaning of a statute is ordinarily reflected in its literal words, then the plain meaning here is that the evidence is not excluded. Evidence *294is offered at trial, and the conduct at that time is "past” conduct whether it occurred before or after the alleged assault.
But the meaning is not quite plain enough, it seems, as the majority finds it necessary to resort to a rule of construction, the one applied here being that we must presume that every word in a statute has meaning so that none of them can be seen as surplusage or nugatory. Accordingly, it is said, because all conduct is "past” at the time of trial, that word would be unnecessary if it applied literally to all past conduct; and so the word "past” must be understood as referring only to conduct that occurred before the offense charged, and not after.
Remarkably, however, after using the "no wasted words” rule as the only justification for finding a meaning in the statute that does not fit its literal words, the majority opinion goes on to say that the premise of the rule does not exist. The principle of Saint George Orthodox Church of Southgate v Laupmanis Associates, PC, 204 Mich App 278; 514 NW2d 516 (1994), that the majority applied is meaningless unless there is room for its presumption that the Legislature carefully thought about the consequences of each word it used. But we are assured by the majority — and I quite agree — that, in fact, the Legislature did not think about this issue at all. What we have, then, is not a reading of the plain meaning of the statute, but instead a construction of the artificial result of applying an assumption that is acknowledged to be nonexistent.
The majority declines responsibility for the result by saying that it is the Legislature’s obligation, not the Court’s, to "keep legislation current.” But no action by the Legislature is required. All that is necessary is that the Court itself abstain *295from a pretense that the Legislature carefully projected the consequence of each word it used when we know that it did not. The majority seems somehow obliged to reach an unintended result for no better reason than that the words fell onto the paper in a given arrangement. Dubbed the "dictionary” school of construction,2 that has never been an accepted method of interpreting statutes.
Instead of construing the statute under a nonexistent premise, or under the principle of People v Stull, 127 Mich App 14; 338 NW2d 402 (1983), whose context — sexual conduct with a third person —is also absent here, the statute should have been viewed in the light of what the Court said in People v Perkins, 424 Mich 302, 307-308; 379 NW2d 390 (1982), which, like the case at bar, involved conduct between a complainant and an accused:
Because the proposed testimony in this case related to sexual activity between the complainant and the defendant, the strong prohibitions on evidence of a complainant’s past sexual activities, which we have discussed in several recent opinions,6 are not involved.7 As the statute indicates, we are faced with the more usual evidentiary issues of the materiality of the evidence to the issues in the case and the balancing of its probative value with the danger of unfair prejudice.
*296The evidentiary prohibitions that the Court references are aimed at avoiding (1) the unnecessary humiliation of complainants, (2) deterrents to the reporting and prosecution of sexual assaults, and (3) distraction from the question of guilt of the accused. People v Arenda, 416 Mich 1; 330 NW2d 814 (1982). Sexual conduct with the very person accused of the assault, on the other hand, has a qualitatively different level of probative value, and if the Legislature was not at all concerned with excluding evidence of such conduct, as the Supreme Court observes, it is patently inappropriate to infer that they drew a distinction about it on the basis whether it occurred before or after the time of the crime charged.
It should be obvious, then, that the word "past” was used in the statute in its ordinary sense. Whether or not it measures up to a scrivener’s punctilio, there is nothing manifestly irregular, after all, in referring to all conduct that has occurred in the past as "past” conduct. Take, for example, the following passage from the majority opinion in People v Hackett, 421 Mich 338, 347-348; 365 NW2d 120 (1984):
*297By enacting a general exclusionary rule, the Legislature recognized that in the vast majority of cases, evidence of a rape victim’s prior sexual conduct with others, and sexual reputation, when offered to prove that the conduct at issue was consensual or for general impeachment is inadmissible. [Emphasis supplied.]
The word "prior” is used here as a synonym for "past.” If we can assume that a Supreme Court justice writing for publication will be at least as diligent with language as an anonymous drafter of legislation, and if we were to apply the same rule of construction that the majority does with the statute, we would say that, because the word "prior” is otherwise superfluous, we must regard the Court as saying that the general exclusionary rule bars evidence of a victim’s sexual conduct that occurs before the alleged crime, but not after. That , would be a tortured view of what the Court said, and the result reached here is hardly more acceptable.
Besides ruling that the proffered evidence is excluded by the rape-shield act, the majority adds that it has insufficient probative value to command admissibility under the constitutional right of confrontation.3 The defendant contends, and the trial court has agreed, that the evidence of subsequent consensual relations is relevant to show that the assault never occurred because, if he had forcibly assaulted her as alleged, she would not have agreed to have sex with him on two occasions within a relatively short time thereafter. While the later acts of consensual sex would not necessarily preclude a finding that the complainant was *298assaulted, they are certainly not irrelevant to the point. MRE 401.
The majority says that the evidence is not sufficiently probative because it is offered only for "impeachment.” But it can say that only by distorting the meaning of the term. The proffered evidence would be impeachment, it is said, because the defendant contends that the assault never occurred and, therefore, the defendant is saying that the complainant is lying.
Saying that the assault never occurred is contradiction, not impeachment. In the law of evidence "impeachment” refers to an attack on the capacity of a witness to tell the truth in regard to moral character, mental capacity, bias, interest, corruption, and the like. Offering contradictory testimony on the substantive issues in the case is something quite different, and any impeaching effect of such evidence is incidental. 3A Wigmore, Evidence (Chadbourn rev), § 908, p 698.
The majority’s definition of "impeachment” coincides with the prosecutor’s definition of "prejudice.” When asked on oral argument how the complainant would be prejudiced by the evidence, the prosecutor responded that a jury might conclude that the acts of consensual sex are inconsistent with her having been assaulted by the defendant.
Precisely so. The excluded evidence, apparently, would tell us too much about the truth of what occurred. The barely hidden rationale behind these irregular notions of impeachment and prejudice is the proposition that the rape-shield statute excludes evidence of a defendant’s innocence in order to protect the complainant from being exposed as a liar. Surely we have not yet come to that.
If any additional proof were necessary to demon*299strate the full extent of the anomaly of today’s ruling, it would be supplied by the fact that the excluded evidence bears no resemblance to the policy behind the rape-shield statute, which, in a word, is to protect complainants from unnecessarily embarrassing evidence of sexual conduct. The degrading and reputation-rending conduct that the Court will keep from the ears of the jury in this case is that the complainant, a married woman, agreed to have sexual relations with her husband on two occasions. If the word should get out, probably no one will speak to her again.
What we are left with, then, is that evidence that is probative of the defendant’s innocence and that the Legislature never thought of excluding, and which imputes no unchaste behavior to the complainant, must be excluded nevertheless in order to spare the Legislature from the charge of extravagance in the use of a single word.
In my view the trial court did not abuse its discretion in deeming the questioned evidence admissible. For the above reasons I say that it properly could not have reached a different result.

 MCL 750.520j(l)(a); MSA 28.788(10)(l)(a).

 See People v Hackett, 421 Mich 338; 365 NW2d 120 (1984); People v Williams, 416 Mich 25; 330 NW2d 823 (1982); People v Arenda, 416 Mich 1; 330 NW2d 814 (1982).

 As we explained in People v Arenda, n 6 supra:
"The rape-shield law, with certain specific exceptions, was designed to exclude evidence of the victim’s sexual conduct with persons other than defendant. . . .
"The prohibitions contained in the rape-shield law represent a legislative determination that, in most cases, such evidence is irrelevant. . . .

 Schwartz v Mills, 192 F2d 727, 733, (CA 2, 1951), quoting Judge Learned Hand.
*296"The prohibitions in the law are also a reflection of the legislative determination that inquiries into sex histories, even when minimally relevant, carry a danger of unfairly prejudicing and misleading the jury.” 416 Mich 10. (Emphasis added.)
Indeed, MRE 404(aX3) provides for different treatment of evidence of prior sexual activity between a complainant and a defendant:
"(a) Character Evidence Generally. Evidence of a person’s character or trait of his character is not admissible for the purpose of proving that he acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion, except:
"(3) Character of Victim of Sexual Conduct Crime. In a prosecution for a criminal sexual conduct, evidence of the victim’s past sexual conduct with the defendant and evidence of specific instances of sexual activity showing the source or origin of semen, pregnancy, or disease.”
[Footnotes 8 and -9 omitted.]

 See People v Hackett, supra. As is perhaps obvious, I do not suggest that it is necessary to resort to the constitution to justify admission of the evidence.