Court Opinion

ID: 9707199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:05:02.578106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:29.091312
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with Justice Papadakos that Commonwealth v. Majorana, 503 Pa. 602, 470 A.2d 80 (1983), is not applicable to the facts of this case and that the trial court acted well within its discretion and authority in denying appellant’s motion in limine supported only by his nebulous and ephemeral offer of proof. The majority is sufficiently impressed with appellant’s offer of proof that an individual was alleged to have had sexual relations with the victim “around the time of the alleged rape,” at 603 to remand the case to the trial court to hear testimony on this issue. However, as Justice Papadakos makes clear, “around the time” in this case meant possibly on the same weekend although the individual “couldn’t remember whether he had sexual relations with her that weekend or not.” Dissenting op. at 608. That nebulous offer — that someone else allegedly may have had sexual relations with the victim that same weekend, but maybe not — may be enough, the majority reasons, to override the explicit and unambiguous protections for the rape victim enacted by the Rape Shield Law, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 3104, an enactment that was long overdue and *607apparently soon to be forgotten. In Majorana, this author dissented, stating: “the majority has now taken the first step to water [the Rape Shield Law] down and allow the evil and harm of introducing evidence of a woman’s past sexual conduct to creep back into the courtroom.” 503 Pa. at 613, 470 A.2d at 85 (Larsen, J., dissenting). I fear that by remanding to the trial court with instructions to apply Marjorana, thereby possibly permitting the introduction of vague assertions of the victim’s alleged past sexual conduct in this case (where the trial court found those assertions to be lacking in reliability and probative value), the watering-down of the Rape Shield Law begun in Majorana will become a torrent that will likely erode that law beyond recognition and render it impotent. The ease with which such a “defense” (consisting of vague assertions of the rape victim’s sexual activity roughly near the time of the alleged rape) may be fabricated by a desperate defendant and his friends subjects every rape victim to “the travesty of presenting a noisome stream of defense witnesses testifying to the sexual propensities, often sordid and sometimes fanciful, of the complaining witness.” Commonwealth v. Strube, 274 Pa.Super. 199, 208, 418 A.2d 365, 369 (1979).
I urge the Legislature to fortify the Rape Shield Law and to restore that level of protection that was clearly intended by the Legislature to rectify the past abuses of the criminal justice system and to prohibit the sort of “evidence” that the majority now holds may be introduced at appellant’s retrial. In the meantime, I urge the lower court to attempt to give the fullest measure of protection to the victim that is permissible under the Rape Shield Law as currently interpreted by this Court. I regret that the majority has taken such a major step backward and has added a tragic chapter to the “sad history of our criminal justice system’s treatment of complaining rape victims. ...” Commonwealth v. Majorana, supra, 503 Pa. at 608, 470 A.2d at 83.