Court Opinion

ID: 9786028
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:45:37.574244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:40.874883
License: Public Domain

BOSSON, Justice (concurring in part and dissenting in part). {58} I concur whole-heartedly with the author’s analysis of the Brady issue, as well as the fundamental legal framework posited for evaluating newly-discovered evidence offered in a habeas petition many years after the original trial. This Opinion will well-serve the bench and bar for the clarity it brings to this important field. With great regret, however, I cannot join in the majority’s decision to find that recantations in cases like this cannot be “newly-discovered” even if a trial court were to find them credible. For the following reasons, I would remand the case to the trial court for a determination of the credibility of the recantations. {59} The credibility of a recantation is not so easily divorced from the significance of that recantation as newly-discovered evidence. A trial court’s finding that a recantation is credible directly implicates our concern that a person should not be “incarcerated solely on the basis of lies,” regardless of whether the recanting witness has previously wavered in his or her story. It seems contrary to our truth-seeking responsibilities to say that a credible recantation by a principal witness should be disregarded simply because the witness’s credibility had previously been called into question at trial, and thus the credible recantation would add nothing new. Inherently, if a trial court finds that a recantation is believable, and by extension understands that a jury could have found it believable, it should not matter that there were inconsistent statements at trial. If a reviewing court believes the recanted testimony, and thus believes that the witness lied at trial, it follows that the incarceration is based upon lies, justifying judicial intervention. See United States v. Earles, 983 F.Supp. 1236, 1250 (N.D.Iowa 1997) (noting that “credibility of the recantation is the key to the impact of the recantation upon the probability that the recantation will lead to an acquittal”). A credible recantation would certainly constitute a new weapon that the defense did not previously have. {60} Further, in evaluating credibility, trial courts should be allowed to consider both the circumstances surrounding the latest recantation that make it different from the inconsistencies presented at trial, as well as the fact that the recantation of sworn testimony under oath is itself something that a jury would not necessarily ignore. As noted by the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Leibowitz, “notwithstanding the perjured testimony was contradicted at the trial, a new light is thrown on it by the admission that it was false.” 919 F.2d 482, 485 (7th Cir.1990) (quoted authority omitted). {61} Using this case as an example, the witnesses testified that they felt guilty about lying at the trial and had been living with that guilt for many years. Audrey Knight had contacted Curtis Worley’s father of her own accord, and arranged to meet with him so that she could “get it off her chest.” Paul Dunlap had become religious and testified that when the law students asked him if he told the truth at trial, he was about to lie and say that he had, but he just could not go through with it, so he admitted that he had lied at Case’s trial. He knew nothing of Knight’s recantation at that time. At the habeas hearing, Dunlap insisted that he wanted to “do the right thing,” even after being advised of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and otherwise resisting pressure from the prosecution not to testify. These circumstances all add something beyond the original inconsistencies at trial, and they are not things that Petitioner could have uncovered pre-trial with due diligence. {62} In my view, this case, as with most habeas cases involving recanted testimony, comes down to the trial court’s essential function of testing the credibility of the recantations. The trial court should be instructed to perform that function, and if the trial court is persuaded that the recantations are credible, then relief should follow. I do not understand the cases cited by the majority in support of the notion that Knight’s and Dunlap’s recantations were not “newly-discovered” to say anything different. In none of those cases did the court find that a credible recantation was nonetheless insignificant. Further, each of those cases was either a review of a trial court’s credibility determination or was a district court opinion, and each emphasized the critical role of the trial court in evaluating and deciding credibility. See Olson v. United States, 989 F.2d 229, 232 (7th Cir.1993) (court was persuaded in part “by the fact that the same district court judge who denied [the defendant’s] most recent new trial motion presided over his trial and was able to view, weigh and analyze firsthand not only the witnesses’ composure or lack thereof, but their testimony as well”); United States v. Ramsey, 761 F.2d 603, 604 (10th Cir.1985) (“The district court judge, who took the evidence and personally observed the witness as he testified, was in a much better position than this court to determine whether, even after noting [the witness’s] frequent about-faces, his testimony was nonetheless sufficiently credible to support a jury verdict.”); Earles, 983 F.Supp. at 1249 (explaining that “[t]he level of insulation the law grants to a skeptical trial judge’s assessment of recanting affidavits reflects the notion that trial judges are in the best position to compare a witness’s earlier testimony with his new version of the facts” (quoted authority omitted)); see also State v. Chavez, 116 N.M. 807, 812, 867 P.2d 1189, 1194 (Ct.App.1993) (noting that “[t]he trial court is in the best position to evaluate the evidence of prejudice” to the defense due to the State’s failure to disclose the previous arrest of an important witness). {63} It may be that in the case before us the trial judge would have no reason to believe Knight and Dunlap any more now than twenty-four years ago. Fair enough. But in a future case, let us suppose that every key witness were to recant and the lawyers were to come armed not only with recantations persuasive in themselves, but also with airtight alibi witnesses corroborating all of the recanting witnesses’ testimony. In that event, would we flatly prohibit the trial judge from ordering a new trial simply because similar questions of credibility were hashed out twenty-four years earlier? I would leave the power in the trial judge to conclude in an appropriate case that a credible, persuasive recantation can itself be newly-discovered evidence, even though it suffers from all the weight that the majority attaches to it. In this instance, I would remand for the trial judge to determine the credibility of the recantations.