Court Opinion

ID: 9721214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:52:20.563237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:24.063961
License: Public Domain

Tauro, C.J.
(dissenting, with whom Reardon and Brau-cher, JJ., join) In my view the majority opinion without good reason departs from the long established rule concerning the discretionary power of a trial judge as to the extent of cross-examination on collateral matters and I therefore dissent, for the following reasons.
1. Two rules emerge from the many Massachusetts cases dealing with the discretionary power of the trial judge as to the extent of permissible cross-examination of a witness on “collateral”1 matters. The general rule gives the trial judge wide discretion in limiting or preventing cross-examination of this nature. The judge will be reversed only if he has abused his discretion, that is, if he has made a decision “that no conscientious judge, acting intelligently, could honestly have . . . [made].” Davis v. Boston Elev. Ry. 235 Mass. 482, 502 (1920). See, for the general rule, Commonwealth v. Corcoran, 252 Mass. 465, 486 (1925); Commonwealth v. Granito, 326 Mass. 494, 496 (1950). But it has also been said that the general rule “has no application where alleged contradictory statements of a witness relate to the main issue that is being tried” (emphasis added). Commonwealth v. A Juvenile, 361 Mass. 214, 218 (1972). See, e.g., Commonwealth v. West, 312 Mass. 438, 440 (1942). The defendant is said to be entitled to cross-examine in this situation as a matter of right.
*2962. Only one of the two required elements of the exception to the general rule is to be found in the instant cases. No doubt, the identifying witness/victim was testifying as to the main issue being tried — whether it was the defendant who had raped her. However, the defendant did not seek to introduce prior or subsequent action or statements of the witness which stood in contradiction to any of her testimony. On direct examination, she unequivocally identified the defendant as the man who had raped her. The defendant wished to bring out on cross-examination that the witness had earlier misidentified the defendant’s alleged accomplice. While this occurrence may have served to undermine the witness’s general credibility in the judge’s mind, it does not even in the broadest sense contradict her testimony that she was positive that the defendant had raped her. It is not as if she had earlier expressed doubt as to the defendant’s identity or, in the extreme, had declared her assailant to have been someone else. In short, her alleged earlier misidentification of the defendant’s alleged accomplice is separate from — not in contradiction to — her identification of the defendant.
3. In all criminal cases where the defendant was said to have a “right” to cross-examine on a collateral issue, it was intended to introduce an earlier statement or action of the witness which contradicted or was contrary to testimony given on direct examination. This was explicitly stated to be the case in Commonwealth v. A Juvenile, supra, at 218, where the defendant had been prevented from introducing in the Superior Court contradictory or inconsistent statements made by prosecution witnesses in prior District Court proceedings. Commonwealth v. West, 312 Mass. 438 (1942), also fits this pattern. The key witness for the Commonwealth testified that the defendant, accused of impersonating a police officer and of extortion by threatening to accuse another of a crime, had initiated a friendship with him and had made “indecent proposals,” which he, the witness, had rejected. Thereafter, continued the witness, the defendant began to extort money from him in *297exchange for not being arrested. In sum, the witness claimed to be an innocent and resisting victim of the defendant’s extortion scheme. Later, the defendant himself had testified that in fact the witness had initiated the friendship and had sought to make it an “immoral” one. In this regard, he sought to impeach the witness’s testimony by asking him the following question: “[Is it not true that just prior to the defendant’s arrest, you said,] ‘I’m sorry I have to do this to you Bill [the defendant], but it’s either me or you; I got a 9-month suspended sentence once before for picking up a fellow in the subway’?” While not a contradiction in plain terms of the witness’s direct testimony that he was a resisting victim of the defendant’s scheme, the statement, containing an apology to the defendant and a reference to an earlier “indecent” relationship, is inconsistent with this version of events. As such, despite the evidentiary problem about indirectly introducing a prior conviction, we ruled that the defendant should have been allowed to ask the question. Thus the case (and others cited in the majority opinion) is clearly distinguishable from the instant cases.
4. In the last analysis, we are here dealing with the testing of the witness’s power of identification, observation, and memory. An examination of the transcript of the evidence clearly indicates that there was ample cross-examination permitted on this score. It is universally established that the extent of such cross-examination is discretionary with the trial judge. Moreover, the proffered cross-examination attempted to raise other collateral issues of more than passing importance. The subject of the alleged misidentification was not the defendant but, rather, the codefendant whose case had been severed and who was to be tried in a separate case. The allowance of such cross-examination necessarily would have raised a confusion of collateral issues, which is precisely why such questioning is usually left to the judge’s discretion.
“While the ... [trial judge] could properly have permitted such testing of the capacity of the witness to observe *298and recall, a court has wide discretion in permitting, prohibiting or curtailing such excursions.” United States v. Evans, 359 F. 2d 776, 777 (3d Cir. 1966).

 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940) § 1003, indorses the following test (definition) of collateralness: “Could the fact, as to which error is predicated, have been shown in evidence for any purpose independently of the contradiction?” (emphasis added).