Court Opinion

ID: 9795978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:44:14.729515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:43:21.853609
License: Public Domain

Judge GRAHAM
specially concurring.
While I concur in the result reached in this matter, I disagree with the analysis set forth in part I of the opinion in which the majority determines that the appeal of issues relating to guilt was timely simply because defendant was resentenced. I read Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987), and United States v. Burch, 202 F.3d 1274 (10th Cir.2000), to mean that a judgment of conviction is final when guilt is determined, a sentence is entered, and the time for filing a petition for certiorari has elapsed. That a sentence, once entered, is later vacated and modified by resentencing, in my view, nevertheless affirms the conviction. When the time for filing a petition to review that affirmation of conviction has run, the judgment of conviction is final. Although the sentence may be altered, the fact remains that a sentence was originally entered. Thus, all the requirements set forth in Griffith have been met, even though a sentence may be changed in terms of its duration.
Changing the duration of a sentence previously entered ought not, in my view, open the door to once again directly appeal an issue relating to the judgment of guilt, which has been fully and finally litigated. Accordingly, believing that the judgment of conviction was final long before Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), was decided, I conclude that Crawford has no retroactive application here.
Judge VOGT dissenting.
I agree with Judge Román that defendant is entitled to assert a violation of his rights under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), because his conviction was not yet final when Crawford was announced. However, unlike the majority, I conclude that admission of C’s videotaped interview violated defendant’s constitutional right to confront witnesses, and that the violation was not harmless. I therefore respectfully dissent from the majority’s affirmance of the judgment.
As the majority points out, the Crawford Court did not spell out a comprehensive definition of “testimonial.” However, it gave some guidance on the issue by noting various formulations of the “core class” of testimonial statements at which the Confrontation Clause was directed. These include (1) “ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent — that is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that de-clarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially”; (2) “extrajudicial statements ... contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions”; and (3) “statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.” *1055Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. at 1364; see also Compan v. People, 121 P.3d 876 (Colo.2005).
As summarized by a division of this court, testimonial statements under Crawford are generally “(1) solemn or formal statements (not casual or off-hand remarks), (2) made for the purpose of proving or establishing facts in judicial proceedings (not for business or personal purposes), (3) to a government actor or agent (not to someone unassociated with government activity).” People v. Com-pan, 100 P.3d 533, 537 (Colo.App.2004), aff'd, 121 P.3d 876 (Colo.2005).
Here, a police detective arranged for the child to be taken to a children’s advocacy center to be interviewed by a forensic interviewer. Although the majority states that the interview was conducted outside the presence of police and prosecutors, the detective testified that she observed the interview on a video monitor in the next room. The videotape shows that, near the end of the interview, the interviewer asks the child to wait while the interviewer checks to see whether she needs to ask any more questions. The interviewer leaves the room and, when she returns, asks the child where the assaults took place and poses further followup questions. The interviewer also asks the child at one point whether she may bring in her “helper” who is in the next room, but the child says she may not.
In these circumstances, I believe the interviewer can fairly be deemed to have been acting as an agent of the government, even though she was not herself a police officer.
Further, although no oath was administered at the outset, the interviewer talked to the child about the need to tell the truth and asked the child questions to determine whether she could tell the truth. See Thomas v. People, 803 P.2d 144 (Colo.1990)(pur-pose of oath was satisfied when children were asked at start of videotaped deposition to explain difference between truth and lie, and were told it was important to tell the truth).
Finally, it is undisputed that the purpose of the interview was to elicit statements that would be used to prove facts at a later criminal trial.
On this record, I believe that the statements made by the child during the interview were clearly testimonial within the meaning of Crawford.
The majority of courts in other jurisdictions have held that, when a child makes an accusation of abuse to a governmental agent in an interview, the child’s statement is testimonial under Crawford. See United States v. Bordeaux, 400 F.3d 548 (8th Cir.2005) (child statements during forensic interview set up by law enforcement were testimonial); Bockting v. Bayer, 399 F.3d 1010, amended, 408 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir.2005)(statements in detective’s interview with six-year-old were testimonial); T.P. v. State, 911 So.2d 1117 (Ala.Crim.App.2004)(child’s statements to sheriffs investigator and social worker were testimonial); People v. Sisavath, 118 Cal.App.4th 1396, 13 Cal.Rptr.3d 753 (2004)(ehild’s statement to forensic interview specialist was testimonial); Blanton v. State, 880 So.2d 798 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.2004)(child’s audiotape statement to police investigator was conceded by state to be testimonial); In re T.T., 351 Ill.App.3d 976, 287 Ill.Dec. 145, 815 N.E.2d 789 (2004)(ehild statements to police, state social worker, and examining physician were testimonial); In re Rolandis G., 352 Ill.App.3d 776, 288 Ill.Dec. 58, 817 N.E.2d 183 (2004)(appeal pending )(child statements to police officer and child advocacy worker were testimonial); Purvis v. State, 829 N.E.2d 572 (Ind.Ct.App.2005)(child’s statement to police officer was testimonial); State v. Snowden, 385 Md. 64, 867 A.2d 314 (2005)(child’s statements in interview with social worker who investigated sexual abuse cases were testimonial); State v. Mack, 337 Or. 586, 101 P.3d 349 (2004)(three-year-old’s statements to caseworker during police-directed interview were testimonial). But see People v. Geno, 261 Mich.App. 624, 683 N.W.2d 687 (2004)(child’s response to interviewer who was not a government employee was not testimonial); State v. Krasky, 696 N.W.2d 816 (Minn.Ct.App.2005)(remew granted Aug. 16, 2005)(holding, over a dissent, that child’s *1056statement to nurse practitioner in interview arranged by police was not testimonial).
I also note that the Crawford Court itself suggested that the statements of a child victim to an investigating police officer that were at issue in White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992), were testimonial. See Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at 58 n. 8, 124 S.Ct. at 1368.
Consistent with Crawford and the decisions set forth above, two divisions of this court have concluded that statements given by child victims to forensic or police interviewers were testimonial hearsay, and that their use at trial violated the defendants’ confrontation rights. See People v. Vigil, 104 P.3d 258 (Colo.App.2004) (cert. granted Dec. 20, 2004, 2004 WL 2926003); People in Interest of RAS., 111 P.3d 487 (Colo.App.2004). In my view, those cases correctly apply Crawford, and I do not believe that the differences between those eases and this one can support a conclusion that the statement at issue here was not testimonial within the meaning of Crawford.
As noted, the fact that the forensic interviewer here was not a police officer, as was the interviewer in RAS., does not preclude her from being deemed an agent of the government. In Vigil, the People had contended that the statements were nontestimonial because the child would not reasonably have expected her statements to be used prosecu-torially. The Vigil division responded to the People’s contention by pointing out facts indicating that the child knew the defendant would be prosecuted and put in jail. However, the absence of such facts in this case does not, in my view, support the majority’s conclusion that C’s statements were nontestimo-nial.
In that regard, I note that, in one of its formulations of “testimonial,” the Crawford Court focused on the “declarant’s” expectation, while in another formulation, the Court referred to circumstances that would lead an “objective witness” reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial. Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. at 1364. In my view, the latter test, which considers the circumstances from the perspective of an “objective witness,” rather than the test analyzing the statement from the perspective of the hearsay declar-ant, is the more useful formulation in cases involving statements by young children. To require that a very young child subjectively understand — or even, that an objective young child understand — that his or her statement is to be used prosecutorially would in most cases effectively eliminate any confrontation challenge to the child’s statements. I do not read Crawford as supporting such a conclusion.
Here, the child’s videotaped statement was central to the prosecution’s case, as evidenced by the prosecutor’s emphasis on it in closing argument. Because I thus cannot conclude that admission of the statement was harmless, I would reverse the judgment of conviction and remand for a new trial.