Court Opinion

ID: 9781649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:59:33.700115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:38.354950
License: Public Domain

Justice BENDER,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The majority reverses the holding of the court of appeals, holding, in part, that statements the child made to the doctor during the forensic examination were not testimonial and were therefore admissible even though Vigil did not have the opportunity to cross-examine the child. In Crawford v. Washington, the United States Supreme Court recognized several formulations of the term “testimonial.” 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 *935L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). Testimonial statements include statements made when a person acting for the government was involved in producing the statement with the intent to develop testimony for trial. See Id. at 56 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 135.4. Crawford implied that testimonial statements also include, statements made under circumstances that would lead an objective witness to reasonably believe that the statement would be available for use in a trial. Id. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354. I believe the child’s statements to the doctor were testimonial under both of these constructions. Applying Crawford’s test, the child’s statements to the doctor were testimonial because the lead police officer orchestrated the forensic examination which the doctor performed solely for the purpose of gathering evidence for use at a later trial. Additionally, the majority modifies the third of Crawford’s three formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements by adding the words “in the position of the declarant.” The majority’s test shifts the focus from an objective appraisal of the circumstances surrounding the questioning to a declarant-cen-tered inquiry and in so doing contravenes Craivford’s rationale that the historical concern of the Confrontation Clause is to prohibit testimony without the benefit of cross-examination which is produced with the involvement of government officers with an eye toward trial. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 56, n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Thus, I would affirm the ruling of the court of appeals on this point, and I respectfully dissent as to Section II. 1 of the majority opinion and concur as to the remainder of the majority opinion.
The Functional Equivalent of Police Interrogation
As a preliminary matter, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that a court must first determine “whether there was a police interrogation” and only after finding no police interrogation analyze whether the statement falls into the “core class” of testimonial statements. Maj. Op. at 923 n. 5. In its attempt to define “testimonial,” Crawford discusses three formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements and declines to adopt a precise definition. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Next, Crawford recognizes that “even under a narrow standard,” the term “testimonial” encompasses statements taken during police interrogations. Id. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Thus, I conclude that police interrogations do not exist as a separate class of testimonial statements distinct from the formulations of the “core class.” Instead, like ex parte testimony at a preliminary hearing, statements taken during police interrogation are always testimonial, even under the narrowest articulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements. Crawford’s “core class” discussion informs the Court’s understanding of the term “testimonial” throughout the opinion and underscores Crawford’s concern with governmental participation in the production of testimony for trial.
Although I disagree with the distinction the majority draws between police interrogation and the “core class” of testimonial statements, I agree with the factors the majority applies to determine whether a statement is testimonial under the theory that it constitutes the functional equivalent of police interrogation. See Maj. Op. at 922 (discussing whether the doctor’s questioning “constituted the functional equivalent of police interrogation” and whether its’ purpose was “to develop testimony for trial”). I disagree with the majority’s application of these factors and would hold that the doctor’s questioning did constitute the functional equivalent of police interrogation and that the doctor acted at the request of the police with the primary purpose of examining the child to preserve testimony for trial. Therefore, the statements elicited by the doctor were testimonial, and, pursuant to Crawford, they could not be admitted without Vigil having the opportunity to cross examine the child. Crawford, 541 U.S. 36, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004).
In my view, the police officer was inextricably involved in the doctor’s examination of the child and the circumstances surrounding the examination show that its primary purpose was to help the police gather evidence to prosecute Mr. Vigil. The lead investigating officer drove the child to the hospital and assisted the mother in signing the child in and filling out the hospital paperwork. Be*936fore the doctor conducted the forensic exam, this officer spoke with him about the background of her sexual assault investigation. At this time, the police had identified Mr. Vigil as a suspect and were working to build a sexual assault case against him. After providing the doctor with the background of the case, this officer gave him a Colorado Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit and asked the doctor to examine the child. Upon completion of this forensic exam, the doctor immediately sealed the exam and handed it to the officer who immediately took it to the police station and entered it into evidence. Hence, the circumstances surrounding the forensic examination imply direct police involvement and demonstrate that the purpose of the exam was to secure evidence for the prosecution of Mr. Vigil.
The facts of this case also demonstrate that the doctor acted on behalf of the police when he administered the forensic exam and that he administered it not for medical treatment, but to preserve evidence in anticipation of a criminal trial. The doctor has a history of testifying as an expert witness, having appeared in hundreds of child sexual assault trials. On the night of the incident, he met with the child to “perform a forensic sexual abuse examination” to look for evidence of sexual abuse. The doctor administered the Colorado Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit, a forensic exam that is administered as standard protocol in cases of alleged sexual abuse. The doctor testified that he administered the exam “in part [to find] physical corroboration [of the child’s statements] as well as [to gather] laboratory or forensic evidence.” Specifically, the doctor administered the exam to “test for the presence of semen, sperm, and acid phosphatases or other types of forensic evidence.” Black’s Law Dictionary defines “forensic” as “[u]sed in or suitable to courts of law or public debate.” Black’s Law Dictionary 578 (7th ed.1999). One purpose of this forensic exam was to detect and collect spermazoa for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to analyze as part of the police investigation. The doctor never met with or examined the child after the night that he administered the forensic exam. These facts demonstrate that the doctor’s purpose in administering the forensic exam was not to treat the child, but to gather and preserve evidence for trial and to help the police conduct their criminal investigation of Mr. Vigil. That this was the purpose of the doctor’s examination is established by the trial court finding of fact that the doctor’s “examination was for the purpose of establishing an expert opinion” and “not for treatment purposes.”
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision'in United States v. Bordeaux is instructive in this case. 400 F.3d 548 (8th Cir.2005). In Bordeaux, the court held that statements a child victim made to a forensic interviewer were testimonial, citing “the formality of the questioning and the government involvement in it.” Id. at 556. The court reasoned that the purpose of the forensic interview “was to collect information for law enforcement.” Id. The court added that even if the statements had some medical purpose, this “does not change the fact that they were testimonial, because Crawford does not indicate, and logic does not dictate, that multi-purpose statements cannot be testimonial.” Id.
In addition to comparing the facts of this case to cases from other jurisdictions, the majority points to two arguments to support its conclusion that the statements the child made to the doctor do not constitute the functional equivalent of police interrogation. First, the majority suggests that admitting the child’s statements would not violate Mr. Vigil’s right to confrontation because the trial court found the statements admissible under the Colorado Rules of Evidence hearsay exception for statements made for the purpose of medical diagnosis and treatment. Second, the majority infers from Crawford’s reference to White v. Illinois that the statements the child sexual assault victim made to police in White were testimonial while the statements she later made to a doctor were non-testimonial. I find neither argument persuasive.
The majority argues that the factors the trial court considered in its medical diagnosis and treatment hearsay analysis are relevant to a Confrontation Clause analysis. Maj. Op. *937at 924-925.1 In my view, this reasoning blurs the distinction between these two doctrines and mistakenly concludes that the forensic exam was for medical purposes. One point Crawford makes clear is that the Court’s former reliance on a firmly rooted hearsay exception justification to find Confrontation Clause compliance is no longer the rule. The Court expressly dismissed this approach in Crawford:
Where testimonial statements are involved, we do not think the Framers meant to leave the Sixth Amendment’s protection to the vagaries of the rules of evidence.
Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Crawford Court added that the necessity of the Confrontation Clause “does not evaporate when testimony happens to fall within some broad, modern hearsay exception, even if that exception might be justifiable in other circumstances.” Id. at 56 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Thus, the majority’s reliance on the medical diagnosis and treatment hearsay doctrine appears to contradict Crawford's express rejection of the firmly rooted hearsay exception approach to Confrontation Clause analysis.
In addition to conflicting with Crawford, the majority’s reliance on the trial court’s hearsay exception analysis results in a conclusion at odds with the trial court’s express finding that the doctor performed the forensic examination for law enforcement rather than medical purposes. That court found that the doctor was not “a treating physician” and that the doctor’s exam was “not for treatment purposes.” Rather, the doctor’s “examination was for the purpose of establishing an expert opinion.” The trial court’s conclusion that these statements were nonetheless admissible pursuant to a hearsay exception is not relevant to a Confrontation Clause analysis. The majority’s reliance on the trial court’s hearsay analysis appears unjustified.
Turning to the majority’s argument concerning White v. Illinois, Crawford’s implication in a footnote that the child’s statement to police in White was testimonial addressed neither the question of whether that child’s statements to a treating physician were testimonial nor whether the child’s statements to police in the present case were testimonial. See Maj. Op. at 922 n. 4. Hence, I disagree with the majority’s reliance on Crawford’s reference to White and with the conclusions the majority draws regarding intentions of the Crawford court.
Because I conclude, as the trial court did, that the doctor examined the child as part of the police investigation and with the purpose of preserving evidence and testimony for trial, the statements he elicited from the child were testimonial and therefore not admissible without the accused having the opportunity to cross examine the child-declarant.
The Majority’s “Objective Witness Test”
I also disagree with the majority’s application of the third of the three formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements discussed in Crawford. To apply this formulation correctly, I suggest that it must be understood in the context of Crawford’s Confrontation Clause analysis.
The purpose of the Confrontation Clause reflects the purpose of the Bill of Rights generally: to limit the power of the government when an individual’s liberty is at stake. See Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 571, n. 4, 124 S.Ct. 2633, 159 L.Ed.2d 578 (2004) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (noting that “the whole point of the procedural guarantees in the Bill of Rights is to limit the methods by which the Government can determine facts that the citizen disputes and on which the citizen’s liberty depends”). To determine what governmental powers the Clause was meant to curtail, Crawford traced the history of the Confrontation Clause from Roman times through sixteenth century England and colonial America to the First Congress of the United States which drafted the proposal that became the Sixth Amendment. Craw*938ford, 541 U.S. at 43-49, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Citing Sir Walter Raleigh’s demand at his trial “let Cobham be here, let him speak it. Call my accuser before my face,” the Court reasoned that “the principal evil at which the Confrontation Clause was directed was ... [the] use of ex parte examinations as evidence against the accused.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at 50, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Court concluded that the founding fathers intended the Confrontation Clause to secure the right of cross-examination of witnesses bearing testimonial evidence against the accused. Id. at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Confrontation Clause prohibits the government from introducing testimony when the government participates in some way to produce testimony with an eye toward trial where the defendant does not have the opportunity to cross examine the declarant-witness.
The majority’s interpretation of the third of Crawford’s three formulations of “testimonial” focuses on the characteristics of the witness. This construction conflicts with the fundamental purpose of the Bill of Rights which serves to protect the rights of individuals when infringed upon by governmental action. Specifically, the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation protects the rights of the accused in the context of a criminal trial. Therefore, the nature of the right protected by the Confrontation Clause does not turn on the characteristics of the witness but on the action of the government that orchestrates and produces trial testimony in the absence of cross-examination.
As noted, Crawford declined to define explicitly the term “testimonial.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. “Testimony,” according to Wigmore, is “[a]ny assertion, taken as the basis of an inference to the existence of the matter asserted... whether made in court or not.” 2 John H. Wigmore, Evidence § 479 (Chadbourn rev. 1979) (emphasis in original). Crawford concerns a subset of this general definition of testimony-testimonial evidence which the Confrontation Clause historically intended to prohibit. The Crawford Court’s extensive discussion of the history of the Confrontation Clause led it to recognize certain statements that are always testimonial under its use of the term and others that always are not. For instance, ex parte testimony at a preliminary hearing, statements taken during interrogations by law enforcement officers, and prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial are testimonial under any formulation of the term. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Conversely, an “off-hand, overheard remark” is not a statement that the Framers intended the Confrontation Clause to exclude. Id. at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354.
But the Crawford Court did not limit its definition of the term “testimonial” to these formal categories of statements. Rather, the Court recognized that “the unpardonable vice of the Roberts test ... [was] its demonstrated capacity to admit core testimonial statements that the Confrontation Clause plainly meant to exclude.” Id. at 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354. While it held that the term “testimonial” applies “at a minimum” to certain types of formal statements, the Court recognized three formulations of what it called the “core class” of testimonial statements that broaden this narrow standard to define the “Clause’s coverage at various levels of abstraction.” Id. at 52,124 S.Ct. 1354.
All three formulations possess the common thread that runs through this “core class” of testimonial statements: a concern with the “involvement of government officers in the production of testimony with an eye toward trial.” Id. at 56 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The three formulations include: (1) “ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent— that is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially”; (2) “extrajudicial statements ... contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions”; and (3) “statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added).
*939Each of Crawford’s three formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements defines testimonial evidence “at various levels of abstraction.” Id. The second formulation of the “core class” includes specific categories of formal statements that the Court recognized as testimonial under “even a narrow standard.” Id. The first and third formulations of the “core class” go beyond the formal testimonial materials listed in the second formulation. The first formulation broadens the “narrow standard” by including not only ex parte testimony, but statements that are its “functional equivalent,” and “similar pretrial statements” that objectively appear to have a prosecutorial purpose. Id. The third formulation looks to an objective appraisal of the circumstances surrounding the questioning to determine whether a statement is testimonial. Under this formulation, a statement is testimonial if it was taken under circumstances that, when viewed objectively, indicate that the statement would be “available for use at a later trial.” Id.
The majority misconstrues the third formulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements. By referring to the third formulation as “the objective witness test,” the majority shifts the focus from an objective determination of whether the circumstances surrounding the questioning indicate that the statements will be available for trial. Instead, use of the phrase “the objective witness test” implies a declarant-centered approach to determine whether a statement is testimonial. Based upon this declarant-centered approach, the majority discusses whether the objective witness “must be defined as an objectively reasonable adult observer educated in the law” or “an objectively reasonable person in the declarant’s position.” See Maj. Op. at 925. The majority reads the language “reasonable, objective witness” out of context to conclude that “the term ‘reasonable, objective witness’ refers to an objectively reasonable person in the de-clarant’s position.” Id. This additional language changes the focus of the third formulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements from an objective appraisal of the circumstances of the questioning to focus instead upon the expectations and cognitive abilities of the actual witness in the case. This shift from an objective view of the circumstances of the out-of-court questioning to the cognitive abilities and subjective traits of the witness, contravenes the common thread of Crawford’s core class of testimonial statements which are produced with government involvement with an eye toward trial.
I find the reasoning of the Maryland Court of Appeals consistent with Crawford ’s rationale and instructive. See State v. Snowden, 385 Md. 64, 867 A.2d 314, 329 (2005). That court interpreted the third formulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements to require an objective evaluation of the circumstances of the questioning and dismissed the “objective person the age of the declarant” standard, reasoning that the intentions underlying the questioning were relevant to the analysis, not only what a witness the victim’s age would reasonably know or expect:
The formulations in Crawford outlining what is testimonial not only take into account the intentions of the declarant, but also look to the intentions of the person eliciting the statement... To allow the prosecution to utilize statements by a young child made in an environment and under circumstances in which the investigators clearly contemplated use of the statements at a later trial would create an exception that we are not prepared to recognize. Thus, we are satisfied that an objective test, using an objective person, rather than an objective child of that age, is the appropriate test for determining whether a statement is testimonial in nature.
Id. Hence, the Snowden court recognized that the third of the three formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements is not meant to inquire about the mental capabilities or understanding of the witness, but instead to evaluate objectively the circumstances surrounding the questioning.
The majority’s reliance on Dutton illustrates a practical problem with introducing subjective elements into what Crawford envisions as an objective test. See Maj. Op. at 925. The majority concludes that an “objectively reasonable person in the declarant’s *940position ” in Dutton would not have foreseen the prosecution using the statement in court, while an “objectively reasonable observer educated, in the law might have foreseen” this use. Maj. Op. at 925 nn. 6, 7 (emphasis added). Once subjective qualifying language, such as “in the declarant’s position,” or “educated in the law,” is introduced to this formulation of testimonial evidence, as with any subjective test, the lines become difficult, if not impossible to draw uniformly. Different courts could emphasize different facts about the witness to reach different conclusions regarding how he might act. For instance, one court may emphasize a child’s age and find, as the majority does, that the statements of “an objective seven-year-old” are not testimonial and another court may emphasize his experience and reach the opposite conclusion. Maj. Op. at 926. In contrast, an objective assessment of the entire circumstances surrounding the questioning is consistent with and supports the objective nature of the third formulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements recognized in Crawford. This approach promotes uniformity and is not subject to the various interpretive choices available under the majority’s “objective witness test” formulation.
Returning to the “statements that were made under circumstances that would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial” formulation of the “core class” of testimonial statements, I conclude that an objective witness would have reasonably known that statements made during a forensic exam would be available later in a criminal trial. The facts demonstrate that the police brought the child to the doctor in a police car, helped the child’s mother sign him in to the hospital, and asked the doctor to perform a forensic exam to build their case against Vigil. An objective witness would reasonably know that the doctor was engaged in gathering evidence for the police and would expect his statements to the doc-
tor to be used — at least in part — to prosecute Vigil.
The majority misconstrues Crawford by adding a subjective element to what Crawford envisions as a standard requiring an objective assessment of circumstances surrounding the questioning. I would apply the standard announced in Crawford to hold that an objective witness would reasonably believe that the statements he made to the doctor obtained under these circumstances would be used to prosecute Mr. Vigil, and that therefore, these statements were testimonial and could not be admitted unless the accused, Vigil, had the opportunity to cross-examine this witness. Hence, I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice Martinez joins in this concurrence and dissent.

. The majority reasons that:
the same factors that led the trial court to rule that the child's statements to the doctor were admissible as statements for the purpose of medical diagnosis and treatment under CRE 803(4) are helpful to our determination that the doctor did not purport to develop testimony for trial but rather intended to gather information in order to reach a medical diagnosis.
Maj. Op. at 924-925.