Court Opinion

ID: 9836040
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 02:54:05.707358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:12.042065
License: Public Domain

ECKERSTROM, Chief Judge,
concurring:
¶ 23 I join with Judge Miller’s opinion in every respect. I write separately because I previously concluded that the trial court’s error in precluding Dr. Haber’s testimony was harmless. Romero I, 236 Ariz. 451, ¶ 69, 341 P.3d at 511 (Eckerstrom, C.J., specially concurring). And, as my dissenting colleague correctly notes, the evidence in the case has not changed since I so reasoned.
¶ 24 However, in light of the supplemental briefing and argument, I can no longer maintain that the jury’s verdict of guilt “was surely unattributable to the error.” Leteve, 237 Ariz. 516, ¶ 25, 354 P.3d at 401, quoting Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 279, 113 S.Ct. 2078. My original reasoning, quoted at length in the dissent, overlooked that Dr. Haber’s testimony, if allowed, could have caused a juror to question the reliability of Mr. Powell’s testimony altogether. As an able lawyer once *512wrote: “[I]t is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.” Abraham Lincoln, Letter to the People of Sangamo County (Mar. 9, 1832), reprinted in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1882-1858, at 1, 4-5 (Done E. Fehrenbacher ed., 1989).