Court Opinion

ID: 9692595
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:58:12.701203+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:35.541486
License: Public Domain

*515EICH, J.
(dissenting). The offer of proof made in support of admission of the complainant's "prior untruthful allegation of sexual assault" indicates that, upon returning to her dormitory room one evening, "crying" and "upset" to the point of being "hysterical," she told her roommates that she had been sexually assaulted — "raped"—on her way home. Then, a few months later, when the complainant and other dormitory residents were sitting around "joking . . . about things that had happened over the [school] year," the complainant "basically said that it didn't happen the way she had said it did." According to her, a man had accosted her outside the dormitory and put his arm around her. She broke away and ran inside, frightened and crying.
This, then, was a young woman, "scared," "crying" and "hysterical" after fleeing from a man who had physically accosted her one night as she returned to her university lodgings. Under these circumstances, I cannot agree with the majority's conclusion that her excited remark to her roommates that she had been sexually assaulted — a remark which, if indeed made in the first place, was never acted upon or reported to the dormitory, university or police authorities and was retracted some time later — should be treated as a "prior untruthful allegation[ ] of sexual assault" within the meaning of sec. 972.11(2)(b)3, Stats. I do not believe such a result is warranted by either the facts of this case or the provisions of the rape shield law and must therefore respectfully record my dissent to the majority's holding. I would affirm the conviction.