Court Opinion

ID: 9643494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:31:26.129651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:01.102668
License: Public Domain

Dooley, J.,
dissenting. At its heart, this case was a credibility contest between defendant, who testified, and his thirteen-year-old step-son, who testified against him. The State, however, had another evidentiary “ace” in Donna Fuller’s testimony that when she confronted defendant, he confessed to the sexual assault. Thus, defendant had no chance to prevail unless he could impeach Donna Fuller’s credibility. Defendant’s counsel arrived at two main avenues of impeachment, neither of which reached the jury because the trial court found inadmissible the evidence on which defendant relied. Because I believe the rulings were erroneous and could not together be found harmless under the proper standard of review, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion affirming defendant’s conviction.
The majority has analyzed in detail the exclusion of the excerpts of the letters, concluding that the refusal to admit them was erroneous, but in the context of all the evidence was harmless error. If this had been the only exclusion, I would probably agree that this error alone should not warrant a new trial. The exclusion of the letters, however, was the least prejudicial of the two errors.
The most important excluded testimony was that of Ken Harris, who came forward during the trial because he believed defendant was not guilty. Ken Harris dated Donna Fuller for several months after defendant was arrested and would have testified that she expressed doubt about whether defendant committed the sexual assault for which he was being tried. The impeachment value of this evidence was *410obvious because Donna Fuller testified that she believed her son1 and that defendant confessed to her. The majority has concluded that the trial judge acted within her discretion in excluding the evidence.2
As the majority recognizes, exclusion of this evidence can be justified only if its probative value is clearly outweighed by other considerations that make it inappropriate for the evidence to reach the jury. See V.R.E. 408. Therefore, the majority-begins by finding that the evidence had only “little relevance” to Ms. Fuller’s truthfulness. I believe this assessment of probative value is clearly wrong.
Apart from the victim’s testimony, the most damning evidence against defendant was Ms. Fuller’s testimony that defendant confessed to her and that she believed her son. Defendant could prevail in this trial only if the jury disbelieved Ms. Fuller, at least in part. The testimony of Ken Harris offered a reason to disbelieve the testimony. If, as Ken Harris would testify, Ms. Fuller expressed doubt about defendant’s guilt to him, a neutral third party, can it be true that she believed her son and that defendant had confessed to her? The Harris testimony would have created a serious discrepancy from which the jury could infer that Ms. Fuller was not being truthful.
I also believe that the grounds the majority asserts for excluding the evidence are wrong. Impeachment evidence can be excluded for reasons like “‘harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness’ safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant.’” State v. Cartee, 161 Vt. 73, 77, 632 A.2d 1108,1111 (1993) (quoting Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986)). None of these reasons apply here to evidence that could have been presented quickly and for which the relevance is obvious. Indeed, given the long arguments and discussions the proposed testimony engendered, it would have been quicker to present it than it was to exclude it.
Nevertheless, the majority holds that the testimony could be excluded as cumulative. Rule 403 authorizes exclusion because of *411“needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” Unless we are going to impose some sort of impeachment quota, we cannot label the Harris testimony as cumulative and certainly cannot call it “needless” in view of the testimony of Ms. Fuller. The fact that defendant had some ability to impeach Ms. Fuller on other grounds — that she initially gave a different story to the police and had a motive to fabricate the accusation against defendant — does not make it cumulative. See, e.g., United States v. Foster, 982 F.2d 551, 554-55 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (fact that defendant could show that key witness for prosecution gave incomplete statement to police does not justify excluding defendant from showing witness also gave incomplete testimony at preliminary hearing). Oddly, the majority does not find cumulative the letters even though the content goes directly to the inconsistencies in her stories to the police and prosecutor, a subject explored in other evidence. Yet, it finds cumulative a different inconsistency raised by the testimony of an ostensibly neutral third party.
In my view, this case is controlled by Cartee and State v. Covell, 146 Vt. 338, 341, 503 A.2d 542, 544 (1985). As we said in Cartee, where the witness’s “credibility was a pivotal issue bearing on defendant’s guilt,” the trial court should be particularly cautious in exercising its discretion to exclude defendant’s impeachment evidence. 161 Vt. at 77, 632 A.2d at 1111.
Because of our harmless error rule, it makes little difference whether we find the exclusion of Harris’s evidence to be a violation of the Confrontation Clause of the federal constitution or an erroneous exclusion of relevant evidence, not excludable under Rule 403. See V.R.E. 402 (relevant evidence is admissible except as limited by the Constitution, statute or rule). We can hold an error harmless only if we can find beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not affect the result. See State v. Carter, 164 Vt. 545, 555, 674 A.2d 1258, 1265 (1996) (harmless error standard is the same for both constitutional and nonconstitutional errors). Because of the significance and weight of Ms. Fuller’s testimony, and the weight that the jury could have attached to the Harris testimony, either individually or in combination with the excerpts from Ms. Fuller’s letters to defendant, I cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the errors in exclusion of evidence did not affect the result.
Accordingly, I dissent.

The State emphasizes both here and in the trial court that Ms. Filler's belief is irrelevant and inadmissible. Despite that position, the prosecutor introduced her belief during her direct examination while questioning her about her initial denial to the police. Ms. Fuller first testified that she denied that her son had reported that defendant had sexually assaulted him. The prosecutor then asked “You didn’t believe it happened, right?” She answered: “I believe that it had happened.”

After a long and difficult-to-follow argument, the trial court ruled that defendant was really trying to attack the credibility of the victim through Ms. Fhller and ruled that Harris’s testimony was inadmissible for that purpose. That argument was not made on appeal, and I would not reach it. As the majority holds, the defendant preserved his argument that the Harris testimony was admissible to impeach Ms. Fhller.