Court Opinion

ID: 9486687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:56:21.584755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:52.407414
License: Public Domain

MILTON POLLACK, Senior District Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
Constitutional error in excluding the proffered cross-examination is conceded by the state court, the district court and the interve-nor in oral argument before this court, but relief has been denied on the ground that, on the whole record, such error was harmless.
Each reviewing court has said that the trial judge erroneously violated defendant’s constitutional “opportunity” to confront the sole witness to the alleged crime with inquiries proposed to show a motive to fabricate her accusations of sodomy against the defendant. No corroboration of any of the sodomy *1219accusations was adduced from any source; there was no medical evidence presented nor any circumstantial indication of the actuality thereof. The district judge noted that prior to the trial, petitioner’s counsel had spoken to the child’s grandmother and
[biased upon her conversations with Ebony, it was the grandmother’s opinion that Ebony fabricated the allegations of sexual abuse due to her jealousy of the petitioner.
Henry v. Speckard, No. 92-CIV-6384, at 5 (W.D.N.Y. March 31, 1993). The trial judge prohibited defense counsel from cross-examining Ebony in this area on the ground of irrelevancy.
Each reviewing court eschewed a reversal on the constitutional error by speculating that the preclusion of the proffered interrogation was harmless error. The protective cloak afforded to the nine-year-old accuser may be understandable but it compromised the jury’s function in such a close case, and, I believe that under all the facts and circumstances in this ease, including the selective verdict of the jury, had a “substantial and injurious effect in determining the jury’s verdict.” Brecht v. Abrahamson, — U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 1722, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993). There was no evidence in the case sufficient to support a conviction on any count other than the testimony of the child. The jury indicated disbelief of the credibility of the accuser by exonerating the defendant from similar accusations of sexual abuse, including the purported incident of sodomy in 1989 and an alleged incident of rape in 1989. To have allowed the precluded cross-examination might well have tipped the scales in favor of the defendant on the 1988 sodomy count. There was no medical evidence on either accusation of sodomy.1 The matters singled out in the opinion of Judge Kearse said to constitute circumstantial evidence of guilt are at best equivocal and the latitude given to counsel in other respects does not make up for the denial of the opportunity to present, head-on, motive to he about the accusations, and to confront Ebony before the jury about her conversations with her grandmother. The seriousness of the charges is reason enough to have afforded the defendant every constitutional opportunity to test the infant accuser’s credibility.
I would reverse.

. The medical testimony related solely to the rape charge which the jury threw out. There was no medical testimony to be considered on the sodomy charge.