Court Opinion

ID: 9633305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:42:15.632917+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:32.889379
License: Public Domain

TAYLOR, Chief Justice,
dissenting, with whom LEHMAN, Justice, joins.
Unconvinced that Arthur George Johnson’s statement, alone, left the jury no choice but to convict for second-degree murder, I cannot ratify denial of Johnson’s right to cross-examine his chief accuser. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Johnson and Ronnie Langley were the only witnesses to the brutal death of Austin BlaekCrow. No one disputes that Johnson was the instrumentality of BlackCrow’s demise. However, the issue of if and when BlaekCrow dropped the knife with which he had threatened and slashed Johnson must be regarded as central to gradation of Johnson’s offense. Without the capacity to cross-examine Langley, Johnson was deprived of the right to confront the only eye witness — a right guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Originally charged as a principal, Langley’s potential jeopardy was drastically diminished from life imprisonment to a maximum of three years, conditioned upon his implication of Johnson. During Johnson’s trial, Langley parlayed this coup by avoiding nettlesome cross-examination through invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The jury’s only extrinsic gauge of Johnson’s veracity was the statement made by Langley when he entered his plea.
Johnson’s statement, of course, is similarly suspect. It is his future, however, which hangs in the balance. Whatever his transgressions, Johnson is due some semblance of constitutional process while Langley, by virtue of his agreement, is assured early release. Why there were but two surviving witnesses to this protracted and violent scene, unfolding inside a maximum security facility, begs the same question posed by *370BlackCrow’s possession of a deadly weapon and Johnson’s night-long drinking binge.
Assuming the majority’s hearsay analysis is valid, it must be remembered that “the values of the Confrontation Clause and the hearsay rule are not identical.” Hopkinson v. State, 632 P.2d 79, 132 (Wyo.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 922, 102 S.Ct. 1280, 71 L.Ed.2d 463 (1982). Having finessed Johnson’s right to confrontation through hearsay analysis, no matter how cautious, the majority violates the distinction articulated in Hopkinson and ignores “the time-honored teaching that a codefendant’s confession inculpating the accused is inherently unreliable, and that convictions supported by such evidence violate the constitutional right of confrontation.”. Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 546, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 2065, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986).
Confrontation is constitutionally enshrined because it sets the stage for that most theatrical of courtroom moments
“in which the accused has an opportunity, not only of testing the recollection and sifting the conscience of the "witness, but of compelling him to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.”
Martinez v. State, 611 P.2d 831, 837 (Wyo.1980) (quoting Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 242-43, 15 S.Ct. 337, 339, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895)). On occasion, prior testimony may be admissible, absent cross-examination, but the sine qua non for such admissibility is representation of the defendant at the prior proceeding and cross-examination actuated by interests remaining essentially unchanged at trial. Trujillo v. State, 880 P.2d 575, 581 (Wyo.1994); see also Cardenas v. State, 811 P.2d 989, 992-93 (Wyo.1991); Rodriguez v. State, 711 P.2d 410, 414 (Wyo.1985); and Martinez, 611 P.2d at 837.
In adjudging Johnson unworthy of the right to cross-examine his chief accuser, we commit constitutional error and abandon a carefully crafted series of Wyoming cases stretching baek to Meldrum v. State, 23 Wyo. 12, 37, 146 P. 596, 600 (1915).
It is difficult to know the darkness of a soul which makes a struggle unto death the necessary consequence of an utterance so apparently inoffensive as “whatever.” I cannot and do not write to exonerate Johnson or excuse his conduct. However, corroboration that a knife remained in BlackCrow’s hand might well have given the jury pause to reconsider the gradation of Johnson’s offense. As Justice Holmes aptly observed: “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.” Brown v. United States, 256 U.S. 335, 343, 41 S.Ct. 501, 502, 65 L.Ed. 961 (1921).
Whether BlackCrow’s knife was uplifted or continued to constitute a threat to Johnson are questions upon which he should have been entitled to the most searching cross-examination of Langley as the only eye witness. Because such cross-examination was denied, I respectfully dissent.