Court Opinion

ID: 9773253
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:40:45.144232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:51.321368
License: Public Domain

Robert L. Brown, Justice, concurring. I concur in the result but only because we are not presented with the crucial issue in this case — the appellant’s right to confront and cross-examine the primary witness against him. Here, the appellant appears to have been denied that right. The four-year-old boy testified at the Rule 803(25) hearsay hearing that the appellant did nothing wrong to him and that he had not told his mother that the appellant had harmed him in any way. The appellant was present at the hearing, and his counsel did not cross-examine the boy for obvious reasons. Following the hearing the trial judge ruled that the boy’s mother could testify at trial regarding statements she said he made to her which incriminated the appellant. The mother did testify at trial about the boy’s incriminating statements. The boy did not testify. Nor was the fact that the boy exonerated the appellant at the Rule 803(25) hearing brought out at trial. The result of all this is the appellant did not have an opportunity to confront or cross-examine the boy, and the jury was not able to assess the boy’s credibility. In 1988, the United States Supreme Court emphasized the right of the accused not only to cross-examination but also to a face-to-face confrontation with the accuser in molestation cases. See Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012 (1988). Prior to Coy the Court had held that when the reliability of the declarant is not called into question, hearsay testimony may be presented so long as it falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. See Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171 (1987). The function of Rule 803(25) is to guarantee that trustworthiness. In this case the reliability of the boy has been called into question, since he gave contradictory testimony to the trial judge, and the mother’s credibility is suspect as the majority opinion aptly states. Under these circumstances the right of the accused to confront his accuser and cross-examine him appears paramount. I do not suggest, by this opinion, that the right to confront witnesses is absolute. It may readily bow to other competing interests such as the emotional trauma that could be visited upon the child witness. This raises the question of whether a videotaped deposition of the child, as authorized by Ark. Code Ann. § 16-44-203 (1987), might have been arranged by the state to reduce that trauma. That statute contemplates a videotaped deposition in the trial judge’s chambers with the defendant and child both present. Such a deposition would eliminate the confrontation clause problems and reduce the emotional trauma to the child inherent in a jury trial.