Court Opinion

ID: 9737075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:14:47.032296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:56.321081
License: Public Domain

G.B. Smith, J.
(dissenting). Defendant’s argument on this appeal is that a statement by the complainant in a hospital in answer to police questioning was not an excited utterance and violated his federal and state rights to confront witnesses and to due process. Because defendant’s conviction violated his federal and state constitutional rights to confront witnesses and to due process, I dissent.
Defendant was convicted of assault in the first degree and resisting arrest resulting from the stabbing of the complainant in the eye with an ice pick. The complainant did not testify before the grand jury or at the trial. The evidence was that two police officers came upon the defendant and the complainant while they were struggling with each other and defendant was holding the ice pick. Both men were homeless, the complainant smelled of alcohol and defendant appeared to be slightly intoxicated.
The only evidence of how the struggle between defendant and the complainant occurred resulted from statements of the complainant which were all admitted by the trial court as excited utterances. The first statement, made as the police approached the two men, was, “He stabbed me.” The second statement, made after the police had subdued defendant and after the complainant had wandered into a nearby laundromat, was that he had lost his eye and a question as to whether or not his eye was still there. In the third statement in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, complainant again said he was stabbed and continued to question whether he would lose his eye. The fourth statement, made at the hospital in response to police questioning about an hour after the incident, without quoting, was substantially as follows: Complainant stated that while he was in a subway station, a garbage can was thrown down the stairs. Complainant felt that the can was thrown at him. He ran up the stairs and someone told him that defendant had thrown the can. He confronted the defendant and during the struggle he was stabbed in his eye. He could not say how the stabbing occurred.
The trial court admitted all of the statements as excited utterances and defendant was convicted. The Appellate Division *310affirmed, stating, “The evidence clearly established that all of the victim’s statements were made while he was still under the influence of the stress caused by his serious injuries (see People v Brown, 70 NY2d 513; People v Edwards, 47 NY2d 493).” (299 AD2d 213, 214 [2002].) A Judge of this Court granted defendant leave to appeal.
At the time of the trial, defendant argued that his right to confront witnesses1 and to a fair trial would be violated by the admission of all of the statements as excited utterances. On this appeal, he argues only that the statement made to the police in the hospital should not have been admitted and that its admission denied him the constitutional rights to confront witnesses and to a fair trial.
Analysis of this case must begin with Pointer v Texas (380 US 400 [1965]). There, the Supreme Court of the United States, after noting that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination had been made obligatory on the states by the Fourteenth Amendment stated, “We hold today that the Sixth Amendment’s right of an accused to confront the witnesses against him is likewise a fundamental right and is made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth Amendment” (380 US at 403). The Court went on to state the following with respect to cross-examination:
“It cannot seriously be doubted at this late date that the right of cross-examination is included in the right of an accused in a criminal case to confront the witnesses against him. And probably no one, certainly no one experienced in the trial of lawsuits, would deny the value of cross-examination in exposing falsehood and bringing out the truth in the trial of a criminal case” (id. at 404).
In Pointer, the Supreme Court reversed petitioner’s conviction for robbery because the testimony of the complainant at a preliminary hearing had been used at the trial held after the complainant had moved to California and did not intend to return to Texas. The petitioner did not have an attorney at the preliminary hearing and was denied the right to cross-examine the complainant.
*311The right to confront witnesses, in essence, the right to cross-examine them, is a sacred right enshrined not only in the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, § 6 of the New York State Constitution but is ancient and is mentioned in a number of works that predate the Constitution, such as the Bible, and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (see Lilly v Virginia, 527 US 116, 140, 141 [1999] [Breyer, J., concurring]). The right of confrontation permits the accused to face his accusers—to test their credibility, their trustworthiness and their veracity. Cross-examination is important because it is instrumental in “exposing falsehood and bringing out the truth in the trial of a criminal case” (Pointer v Texas, 380 US at 404). A Confrontation Clause violation may also constitute a violation of the right of due process and fair trial guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and article I, § 6 of the New York State Constitution.
“The right to cross-examination, protected by the Confrontation Clause, ... is essentially a ‘functional’ right designed to promote reliability in the truth-finding functions of a criminal trial. The cases that have arisen under the Confrontation Clause reflect the application of this functional right” (Kentucky v Stincer, 482 US 730, 737 [1987]). According to Kentucky v Stincer, those cases reflect two broad and nonexclusive categories—first, that the Confrontation Clause is violated when hearsay evidence is admitted as substantive evidence against a defendant without an opportunity to question the declarant at trial and, second, when an out-of-court statement is admitted at trial without adequate indications of trustworthiness (id.).
In dealing with the relationship between the Confrontation Clause and hearsay evidence, the Supreme Court has stated, “The historical evidence leaves little doubt, however, that the Clause was intended to exclude some hearsay” (Ohio v Roberts, 448 US 56, 63 [1980], citing California v Green, 399 US 149, 156-157 nn 9, 10 [1970]). The Court in Ohio v Roberts went on to explain that the Confrontation Clause contained a preference for face-to-face cross-examination of witnesses (id.). Nevertheless, hearsay evidence was admissible but was restricted in two ways. First, the Sixth Amendment established a rule of necessity where usually the prosecution had to produce the declarant or demonstrate his or her unavailability (448 US at 65). Second, once the witness was shown to be unavailable, the hearsay statement was admissible only if its trustworthiness was such that it did not depart from the rule of face-to-face confrontation (id.).
*312Ohio v Roberts concluded that hearsay evidence could be admitted only if it bears “adequate ‘indicia of reliability’ ” (448 US at 66). “Reliability can be inferred without more in a case where the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. In other cases, the evidence must be excluded, at least absent a showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness” (id.). In Ohio v Roberts the Court held that the testimony of a witness at a preliminary hearing, where the witness had been subject to cross-examination, could be admitted into evidence at trial where that witness had failed to honor several subpoenas to appear.
In Idaho v Wright (497 US 805, 820 [1990]) the Supreme Court referred to excited utterances, dying declarations and statements made for medical treatment as firmly rooted hearsay exceptions which would normally be admitted without other indicia of reliability. But the Court went on to add that such statements had to be so trustworthy that little could be added by cross-examination (497 US at 821). There, the Court held that statements concerning sexual abuse made to a doctor by a three-year-old girl did not bear a sufficient indication of reliability and were improperly admitted into evidence.2
In this case, the defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause as articulated in Kentucky v Stincer were violated by the hearsay evidence admitted as substantive evidence without an opportunity for cross-examination and the admission of hearsay evidence without sufficient indications of trustworthiness. Defendant was convicted on the basis of a hospital statement that the majority agrees was inadmissible. Contrary to the decision of the majority, I cannot conclude that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and that the introduction of the hospital statement did not contribute to the conviction (Chapman v California, 386 US 18 [1967]).
*313In Chapman the Supreme Court concluded that there are some constitutional errors which may be considered harmless:
“We conclude that there may be some constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the Federal Constitution, be deemed harmless, not requiring the automatic reversal of the conviction” (id. at 22).
That a constitutional error can be harmless is not the only relevance of the Chapman case. As important is the Supreme Court’s determination of when an error is harmless. The Court stated:
“We prefer the approach of this Court in deciding what was harmless error in our recent case of Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U. S. 85. There we said: ‘The question is whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction.’ Id., at 86-87. . . . There is little, if any, difference between our statement in Fahy v. Connecticut about ‘whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction’ and requiring the beneficiary of a constitutional error to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained” (386 US at 23-24).
There are situations in which the fundamental interests served by the right to confront witnesses are not significantly impaired by the admission of a hearsay statement that falls under an exception (cf. Lilly v Virginia). In this case, however, the challenged statement does not even fall within a hearsay exception. The introduction of that statement violated defendant’s right of cross-examination and was prejudicial in that it gave only the complainant’s version of the events without cross-examination. Moreover, the complainant could not say how the stabbing occurred. Defendant had no burden at the trial and was presumed innocent.
The statements made at the scene, in the laundromat and in the ambulance, even assuming their admission was normally proper under Ohio v Roberts and Idaho v Wright, did not bear a sufficient indication of reliability. The complainant had a motive to lie because he went looking for the person who had thrown a trash can and sought a confrontation. Moreover, the fact that *314the complainant smelled of alcohol is an indication that he may have been under the influence of alcohol and “militates against finding that his statements were so inherently reliable that cross-examination would have been superfluous” (Lilly v Virginia, 527 US 116, 139 [1999]).
The evidence leaves little doubt that defendant stabbed the victim. The same cannot be said of the evidence that defendant did so intentionally. How the confrontation proceeded and how the stabbing occurred, whether deliberately or accidently during a struggle, are unknown. Had the complainant been subject to cross-examination, questions surrounding the incident would have been answered and the jury might have gotten a more complete picture of the confrontation.
I would reverse the conviction.
Judges Ciparick, Rosenblatt, Grafpeo and Read concur with Chief Judge Kaye; Judge G.B. Smith dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion.
Order affirmed.

. Both the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, § 6 of the New York State Constitution give a defendant the right to confront witnesses against him or her. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and article I, § 6 of the New York State Constitution assure the right to due process and a fair trial.

. In White v Illinois (502 US 346 [1992]), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a defendant for aggravated criminal sexual assault, residential burglary and unlawful restraint based upon the spontaneous declarations and statements given for medical treatment of the four-year-old victim. The four-year-old victim had experienced emotional difficulty upon being brought to the courtroom on two occasions. The trial court was not asked to and did not make a finding that the child was unavailable to testify. The defendant did not attempt to call the witness to testify. In ruling that the child’s statements could be introduced, the Court held that the Confrontation Clause had not been violated. Thus, it is evident that in some cases an excited utterance can be admitted without violating the right to confront witnesses. It is also clear that the statements were made by a four-year-old girl and that there was other evidence of sexual misconduct against her.