Court Opinion

ID: 9673132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:06:55.001572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.441607
License: Public Domain

HENRY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
This case presents a serious controversy involving the right of the prosecutor to attack the credibility of a criminal defendant who has not placed his character or reputation in evidence, by cross-examining on specific acts of conduct.
I am not concerned with those questions relating to the defendant’s relationship to, or conduct and treatment of, his wife. Cross-examination as to those matters was well within bounds. My objection is aimed at the action of the State in attempting to force the defendant to place his character in issue and thus attempting to legitimate cross-examination in forbidden areas of the law.
*918I.
The first indication of the State’s strategy came on the cross-examination of the defendant’s lead witness when the following transpired.
Q. What- was Mr. Patton’s propensity for violence?
A. What do you ... I don’t understand that.
Q. Well, was he a violent man, a nonviolent man, a pacifist?
A. I really don’t know what you mean by that, I mean. .
This was followed by questions as to whether the witness had seen defendant in a “fight,” or “hit anybody,” or whether he had observed a specific act of violence directed toward Mrs. Patton, the deceased.
The next overt act in the State’s game plan came during the cross-examination of defendant:
Q. Did your wife ever tell you or did you ever . . . did he [a psychiatrist] ever render the opinion that the only problem with you two was that. you were mean as hell . . . ?
A. No, sir.
Next, defendant was cross-examined on excessive drinking, association with other women (held proper cross-examination by the trial judge), having a shoot-out with Red Caruthers over another woman, driving while drunk, and abusing his own child, while a babe in arms. The Assistant Attorney General asked these questions:
Q. Is it true, sir, you have a propensity for violence?
A. I don’t believe so, sir.
Q. Aren’t you really a violent man?
A. No, sir.
We point out that at no time, directly or indirectly, had defendant placed his reputation for peace and tranquility at issue. As conceded by the Assistant Attorney General, in her able brief, “[t]he defendant’s decision to testify in his own behalf subjects him to examination on his credibility as a witness (citation omitted) but does not place at issue his reputation for traits tending to show guilt or innocence of the crime charged. Durham v. State, 128 Tenn. 636, 163 S.W. 447 (1913).”
The questions relating to defendant’s violent nature were “too broad,” State v. Morgan, 541 S.W.2d 385 (Tenn.1976), and were prejudicially and patently unfair. It is in the same category with the proverbial, “have you stopped beating your wife” question. A positive answer would have been enormously prejudicial to a person on trial for a crime of violence. A negative answer, whether true or false, was calculated to produce disastrous consequences as the ensuing narration will develop.
The following question was:
Q. Let me direct your attention sir, to an event that occurred in an alley in Nashville, where an automobile was blocking your way, and you got out and slashed four tires. Do you recall that incident?
At this point an objection was made and the jury was excused. After a lengthy colloquy among the court and counsel, the modus operandi of the Assistant District Attorney General became clear. He stated to the court:
On cross-examination I asked him the question, “are you a violent person?” It takes a violent person to do this. I asked him, “are you a violent person?” and he said “no.” Now, I have a right to disprove what he said.
The prosecutor, by the incompetent questions quoted above, obviously was seeking to force the defendant to put his character at issue in order that he might attempt to tear it down. As Judge Tatum, speaking for the court in Hatchett v. State, 552 S.W.2d 414 (Tenn.Cr.App.1977), observed:
The State cannot ask a witness an irrelevant but prejudicial question, and then, under the theory of impeachment, predicate a second irrelevant and prejudicial question upon the defendant’s response to the first question. 552 S.W.2d at 415.
This is precisely what the State did after the Trial Judge overruled the objection.
*919Next he asked about an alleged incident when some men were putting a sewer line across or near his property when defendant allegedly took a shotgun and ran them off.
II.
The definitive ruling of this Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Fones, in State v. Morgan, 541 S.W.2d 385 (Tenn.1976),1 rescued Tennessee jurisprudence from the quagmire of conflicts and confusion in the area of questions which properly might be propounded to a criminal defendant as to his past conduct.
We adopted Rules 608(b) and 609(a) and (b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence and applied them in the context of the right of the State to cross-examine a criminal defendant about prior convictions. These rules contemplated witnesses and did not necessarily encompass criminal defendants; however, our extension of them so as to provide coverage to criminal defendants is in keeping with the time-honored holding of our courts that, as a general rule, when a criminal defendant “elects to place himself upon the stand as a witness, he can be treated in all respects as any other witness.” Peck v. State, 86 Tenn. 259, 262, 6 S.W. 389, 390 (1888).
Pertinent to the case at bar, we held, in Morgan:
a. that a criminal defendant may be impeached by cross-examination on specific instances of conduct “if probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness,” but subject to the duty of the trial judge to “conduct a jury-out hearing for the purpose of determining that the probative value of such evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect.” 541 S.W.2d at 388, 390.
b. that the answer of the .defendant, when cross-examined on such specific acts, is conclusive, and the State may not elicit any testimony to the contrary in rebuttal. 541 S.W.2d at 389.
c.that specific instances, other than convictions, may not be proved by extrinsic testimony. 541 S.W.2d at 388.
We test the cross-examination by these standards. The first essential is that the specific act of bad conduct must be “probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness.” This is the same requirement we laid down in Collard v. State, 526 S.W.2d 112 (Tenn.1975), when we held that “[the] defendant and his witnesses can be cross-examined as to specific acts which involve moral turpitude or as to any misconduct which tends to show the witnesses’ lack of veracity or that he is untrustworthy.” 526 S.W.2d at 114. But, we cautioned:
The latter basis for admission of evidence . is not to be taken as an open door to admission of every act of misconduct of the defendant ... on the assertion the evidence is offered to test credibility or to prove untrustworthiness, but must be limited to specific acts of misconduct which have a direct bearing on the issue of truthfulness or trustworthiness, such as an act of dishonesty, or the making of a false statement, or the continued and flagrant violation of the laws of the state. (Emphasis supplied). 526 S.W.2d at 114.
See also State v. Fowler, 213 Tenn. 239, 373 S.W.2d 460 (1963).
Cross-examination designed to show that this defendant was a whiskey drinker and a womanizer, was “mean as hell,” engaged in a shoot-out, and was a man of violence who cut some automobile tires and drew a shotgun on some sewer workers, does not suggest model citizenship; but none, per se, is probative on the issue of truth, trustworthiness or veracity. Except to the extent indicated in the ensuing section, they stand in this record as unsupported, unrelated and unverified accusations, all of which were either denied or explained by defendant. These questions were beyond the bounds of propriety.
*920III.
After the defendant rested, the State called two rebuttal witnesses on the specific instances and to introduce extrinsic evidence. The first, a brother of the deceased, testified that defendant had once bragged to him about “beating up and shooting this fellow two or three times,” after which they “had thrown him out of a car.” This testimony was in response to the defendant’s denial of the “shoot-out” testimony wherein he denied he had ever shot anyone. For the same reasons that the prompting question was incompetent, so was this one.
Next this witness testified that defendant had also told him that “he had some connection with dynamiting and blowing up a truck.” Aside from the nebulous nature of this testimony, it was extrinsic in character and forbidden by Morgan.
The next rebuttal witness testified that defendant had told him of the tire cutting incident and that defendant had related to him “a couple of times of shooting at someone.” Further, he testified that defendant bragged to him “about pushing some woman in her car off the Memorial Bridge,” and saying “[i]t will teach the old biddy to drive slow and block the traffic.” He also testified vaguely about the sewer incident. All this testimony was either extrinsic, or offered in rebuttal as prohibited by Morgan, supra.
None of this testimony was permitted as a result of a jury-out hearing at which the trial judge determined that its probative value outweighed its prejudicial effect. This testimony not only was prejudicially degrading, but also was calculated to confuse the minds of the jury and predispose it to believe defendant guilty, thus effectually stripping him of the presumption of innocence.
We hold that this cross-examination and rebuttal testimony constitute prejudicial and reversible error.
This opinion is not to be construed as holding that where a defendant either in person, or through witnesses, affirmatively places his character in issue, he may not be cross-examined on specific acts. Irrespective of the Morgan holding or procedure, he may be cross-examined as to any specific acts tending to offset proof of good character. Nor does this opinion have any bearing on the admissibility of extrinsic proof of other crimes or specific acts tending to show motive, intent, guilty knowledge, identity, absence of mistake or accident and common scheme or plan.
We pretermit discussion of the issue of insanity.
FONES, J., joins in this dissent.

. The opinion in Morgan was released approximately three months and three weeks prior to the trial of the instant action.