Court Opinion

ID: 9538869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:43:08.758166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:12.974499
License: Public Domain

FIDEL, Presiding Judge,
dissenting in part.
I concur in the reversal of conviction on Counts IV and VI. But I would reverse conviction on all counts. This trial, in my judgment, was fatally undermined by the unlawful and inherently coercive detention of the children who testified against defendant.
The primary evidence against defendant is the testimony of CJ, defendant’s 15-year-old daughter, and RJ, his 13-year-old son. These children recanted, then reinstated, accusations that their father had molested CJ. Recanted and reinstated charges are not unusual in child abuse cases, and courts must find the truth as best they can. But this case is uniquely troubling.
It is useful at the start to consider several features that make this at best a weak case against defendant: First, CJ and RJ, when recanting their initial accusations, said they had reported their father to the police because they were angry that he had brought a woman into the house for extra-marital sexual relations. Second, SJ, an 11-year-old sister who joined her siblings in both their October accusations and their February recantation, has stood by her recantation, testifying that the accusations were a false concoction to punish them father and get him out of the house. Third, there is no corroborating physical evidence. CJ reported that she had been repeatedly subjected to vaginal intercourse over a period of nine years and to several especially painful episodes of anal intercourse, one of them six months before trial and only four weeks before a medical examination for sexual abuse. Yet, upon examination, CJ’s hymen was intact, and she had no signs of anal scarring or abrasion.
None of these points rules out the validity of the charges. But they highlight how closely the State’s case depends on the accuracy and credibility of CJ and RJ. (For these reasons among others, the court finds insufficient circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness to support application of Rule 804(b)(5) of the Arizona Rules of Evidence, the hearsay “catch-all” provision, to CJ’s statements to Officer Parkin.) This is not a case in which the evidence weighs so heavily *548toward conviction as to overwhelm substantial error.
Against this backdrop, I come to the issue of the unlawful coercive force that the State and trial court brought to bear to obtain the testimony of the children.
In February 1993, at an evening meeting at the office of the county attorney, CJ, SJ, and their mother informed the county attorney that the children had made up the accusations against defendant. While their mother was interviewed in a separate room, CJ and SJ departed unannounced for then-grandmother’s home. Subsequently, on February 26, Peoria police officers came to their school, had CJ and SJ removed from school, and brought them to the police station. CJ asked to call her mother before leaving the school and repeated her request at the station. The officers denied both requests. CJ asked whether her mother knew they were being questioned and was told that she did not. At the station, the girls were locked in a room and taken separately for recorded interviews. (The record does not show the circumstances under which the State interviewed RJ.)
At the county attorney’s request, subpoenas for the mother, CJ, RJ, and SJ were served upon the mother, directing all four to appear on Tuesday, March 23, at 10:00 a.m., the first day of trial. The witnesses did not appear. On Wednesday, March 24, at the county attorney’s request, the trial court issued civil arrest warrants for each of them. That afternoon, Peoria police officers arrested the mother and three children at then-home, handcuffed each of them, and brought them to the police station. From the station, the mother was transferred to the county jail and the children to juvenile detention.. No. hearing was provided. On Thursday, March 25, the trial court signed a transportation order, directing that the three children be brought from the juvenile detention center to the trial court at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, March 29. By that order, the court extended the hearingless confinement of the children through the weekend.
After five nights in juvenile detention, RJ was brought to court to testify on March 29. Because RJ did not finish his testimony on the 29th, he was sent for another night in juvenile detention and brought back to court on the following day. CJ and SJ spent six nights in juvenile detention before they were brought to court to testify on the 30th. SJ completed her testimony on that day; but like RJ, CJ did not finish her testimony on the first day and was returned to juvenile detention for another night and then brought back to court the following day.
The trial court made no finding that the children needed to be placed in detention for their own protection (their father awaited trial in jail). Nor did the trial court find the children — or their mother — in civil or criminal contempt. Without a hearing, the trial court had no way of knowing whether the children even knew their mother had been served with a subpoena, or whether the children knew they were subject to a subpoena, much less whether the children had chosen to defy the court order.
Rule 64.1(b) of the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure' permits a court to issue a civil arrest warrant “in a non-criminal matter” when a person fails to appear in court in person as directed in a subpoena. Having issued bench warrants in a criminal matter pursuant to a rule intended for non-criminal matters, the trial court compounded its error by ignoring the protective requirements of the rule. Rule 64.1(d) requires the arrested person to “be brought immediately before the issuing judge if it is reasonably possible” and before some judge “within 24 hours of the execution of the warrant.” The children were not brought before a judge for at least five days. Rule 64.1(e) further requires the judge to “release the arrested person on the least onerous terms and conditions which reasonably guarantee the required appearance.” (Emphasis added.) The record suggests that release options were available. (The children’s maternal grandmother demonstrated her reliability by coming to court on the first day of the trial as required by subpoena, the great-grandparents of the children lived in town, and RJ, by the time of trial, had been living with his great-grandparents for at least two weeks.) Yet the trial court, without considering release alternatives, subjected the children to the most on*549erous terms and conditions, leaving them confined to await trial and complete their testimony for six and, in CJ’s case, seven days.
The trial court never considered, much less followed, the statutory procedures for securing the presence of a material witness in a criminal case. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. (“A.R.S.”) §§ 13-4081 to 13-4084 (1989). Nor did the county attorney bring these statutes to the court’s attention. Pursuant to these statutes, after a preliminary hearing, a material witness may be required to post an appearance bond and, if unable to do so, may be confined — under “extreme circumstances” — for no more than three days. State v. Reid, 114 Ariz. 16, 25, 559 P.2d 136, 145 (1976) (“Confinement of a witness, even for a few days, not charged with a crime, is a harsh and oppressive measure ... justified only in the most extreme circumstances.”). Here, with no hearing, no showing of extreme circumstances to justify any days of confinement, much less the three-day statutory maximum, and no consideration of available release alternatives, the court confined the children for nearly a week. Statutory requirements, like the requirements of Rule 64.1, were wholly ignored.
This chain of events unquestionably denied due process to the children (and to their mother, who similarly was confined in neglect of the statutes and rule). The material questions are whether this chain of events also denied due process to defendant, and, if so, whether it amounted to fundamental error.
My answer to these questions is yes. The last word from the children before they were detained was that they had falsely accused their father. But after grossly impermissible detention that must have seemed interminable to a child, two of the three asserted that their original accusations had been true. Where the truth lies is hard to know. This was not an easy problem for the trial court or the State. The State was responsible for protecting the child witnesses from inappropriate family pressure to recant, and the State undoubtedly suspected such pressure in this case. But the State was not entitled, in pursuit of its position, to sweep away protective rules and procedures and employ detention as a countervailing pressure to accuse.
“[Tjhere is no table of weights and measures for ascertaining what constitutes due process.” Burns v. Wilson, 346 U.S. 137, 149, 73 S.Ct. 1045,1052, 97 L.Ed. 1508 (1953) (separate opinion of Frankfurter, J.). Here, however, the State and trial court vastly exceeded acceptable bounds, and secured the critical evidence against defendant by such improperly coercive means as to reach the foundation of the case and deprive defendant of a fair trial. See State v. King, 158 Ariz. 419, 424, 763 P.2d 239, 244 (1988).
I have focused primarily on the confinement of the children, but two points further weigh in my dissent. First, I cannot minimize, as the majority does, the State’s attribution to defendant’s wife of the opinion that defendant was capable of molesting his daughter. Molestation of one’s own child is so abhorrent an act that a jury would likely suppose it beyond the capacity of most human beings. Such a jury, however, might more readily be persuaded to attribute such an act to a person if told that his wife found it consistent with his character.
Second, I cannot say, as the majority does, that defendant’s convictions were unaffected by inadmissible hearsay from Officer Parkin. The majority acknowledges that CJ’s testimony was vague; the majority acknowledges that CJ’s report to Officer Parkin lacked circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness; and the record contains no physical evidence to corroborate CJ’s on again, off again accusations. Through inadmissible testimony from Officer Parkin, the State supplied dates and time frames that it could not supply through the testimony of CJ. The majority reasons that the State was not required to supply these dates and times. The majority ignores that, by doing so through Officer Parkin, the State supplied a bolster or under-girder for CJ’s testimony that may have influenced the jury’s decision to convict. To say that error was harmless, we must be “confident beyond a reasonable doubt that the error had no influence on the jury’s judgment.” State v. Bible, 175 Ariz. 549, 588, 858 P.2d 1152, 1191 (1993). I cannot say that here.
*550For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse this conviction in its entirety. Further, I would hold the children’s trial testimony and statements in detention inadmissible upon retrial and place the burden on the State to show that any subsequent statements by the children are sufficiently attenuated from the coercive confinement to be reliable upon retrial.