Court Opinion

ID: 9705736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:18:24.105929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:14.493509
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because the trial court clearly violated Appellant’s Sixth Amendment1 right to self-representation by prohibiting him from personally cross-examining the victims.
Time and again, courts, including this Court, have honored the right of an accused to defend him or herself and to question witnesses as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.2 Although “[t]he right of self-representation is not a license to abuse the dignity of the courtroom” or to ignore the “relevant rules of procedural and substantive law,”3 it is not a right to be taken lightly, as the trial judge may only terminate it when “a defendant ... deliberately engages in serious and obstructionist misconduct.”4 But here, without any evidence of disruptive, disorderly, or disrespectful behavior by Appellant, the trial court banned Appellant from cross-examining the victims due to the *34concerns of a victim’s advocate, which were communicated ex parte to the trial court, that the victim-witnesses might be intimidated if Appellant questioned them. This was error.
As the United States Supreme Court has pointed out, in a passage that the majority opinion also quotes:
A defendant’s right to self-representation plainly encompasses certain specific rights to have his voice heard. The pro se defendant must be allowed to control the organization and content of his own defense, to make motions, to argue points of law, to participate in voir dire, to question witnesses, and to address the court and the jury at appropriate points in the trial.5
“The specific right[] to make his voice heard ... form[s] the core of a defendant’s right of self-representation.”6 And if only standby counsel is allowed to question witnesses, i.e., “to speak instead of the defendant on [a] matter of importance,” the defendant’s right of self-representation is eroded.7 In the present case, requiring standby counsel to conduct cross-examination of the victims over Appellant’s objection clearly violated this right. Appellant had no choice as to whether counsel would be helpful in cross-examining the victims, and “forcing a lawyer upon an unwilling defendant is contrary to his basic right to defend himself if he truly wants to do so.”8
The Massachusetts Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Conefrey9 evaluated a trial court’s similar ban on a defendant personally cross-examining the victim and determined that a restriction based on perceived harm violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights. The Conefrey Court’s words are equally applicable here:
The judge appears to have concluded, based on his own experience and feelings as to this trial ... that trauma and intimidation of the complainant, and possibly untruthful answers, would be the inevitable result of the defendant cross-examining the complainant....
The record contains nothing to show that the defendant intended to exploit or manipulate the right of self-representation for ulterior purposes. There is also no indication that the defendant’s questioning of the complainant would harm her, that it would violate the rules of evidence and protocol which normally apply in this sort of trial, or that the complainant would not respond truthfully to his questions.... “The possibility that reasonable cooperation may be withheld, and the right later waived, is not a reason for denying the right of self representation from the start.” United States v. Dougherty, [473 F.2d 1113, 1126 (D.C.Cir.1972) ].
There also can be no question that cross-examination of witnesses, in particular the principal accuser of the defendant, is a fundamental component of the right of self-representation....
The mere belief held by the judge that the complainant could be intimidated or harmed beyond the normal limits associated with a trial involving a young complainant, or that she might respond untruthfully if she was questioned by the *35defendant, is not sufficient to justify the restriction placed on cross-examination.10
The majority opinion cites several cases that have held that restricting a defendant’s personal cross-examination of a victim was not error.11 The difference between those cases (and, for that matter, Conefrey) and this case is that Appellant’s victims were not subjected to sexual abuse. While the victims in this case are no less “victims” because the crime committed against them was not a form of sexual assault or abuse, American jurisprudence has recognized that sex crimes, especially those committed against children, are simply different because the nature of these crimes presents a heightened potential for retraumatizing the victim at trial.12 The concerns about further trauma to the victims that drove the judges to limit the defendants’ rights to personally cross-examine their victims in the cases cited in the majority opinion simply were not present in this case. The majority opinion, however, fails to recognize the distinction and instead broadens the rule in Fields to include all crime victims. The effect of such a rule is to put an end to the truly pro se defendant who chooses to proceed without counsel at all. Such a defendant would never have a chance to cross-examine the alleged victim, and would, in effect, be forced to accept the help of counsel regardless of whether the cross-examination actually presented a heightened potential for retraumatizing of the victim.
The denial of a defendant’s right to personally cross-examine the victims cannot be dismissed as harmless error on the basis that his or her appointed standby attorney effectively questioned the witnesses. This is because the harmless error analysis is inappropriate when addressing the right of self-representation: “Since the right of self-representation is a right that when exercised usually increases the likelihood of a trial outcome unfavorable to the defendant, its denial is not amenable to ‘harmless error’ analysis. The right is either respected or denied; its deprivation cannot be harmless.”13 Nevertheless, “it is not inconceivable that in some rare instances, the defendant might in fact present his case more effectively by conducting his own defense”14 since “[f]rom the jury’s perspective, the message conveyed by the defense may depend as much on the messenger as on the message itself.”15 In this case, the “jury might have received a significantly different impression” of the victims’ credibility had Appellant himself been permitted to cross-examine them.16 This is especially so *36when we consider that the victims were the key witnesses against Appellant. Thus in addition to the Constitutional infringement, the Appellant may have also suffered actual harm from the trial court’s denial of his Sixth Amendment right to personally cross-examine the victims.
I would also note that the right of self-representation in Kentucky’s Constitution is broader than that contained in the United States Constitution.17 We have specifically held that the right in Kentucky is more expansive than the reading of the Sixth Amendment in McKaskle, and “that ‘an accused may make a limited waiver of counsel, specifying the extent of services he desires, and he then is entitled to counsel whose duty will be confined to rendering the specified kind of services (within, of course, the normal scope of counsel services).’ ” 18 Surely this right to limit stand-by or co-counsel to certain services includes the right to direct who cross-examines the victim.
And though a trial court has the discretion to limit scope of cross-examination19 or to assign the presentation of the defense to standby counsel when defendant’s conduct is disruptive, disorderly, or disrespectful,20 this discretion is abused when a trial court implements a prospective bar on a defendant’s right to personally cross-examine his or her accusers when the defendant has not engaged in such behavior. The majority opinion expands the rule in an attempt to erase the trial court’s mistake in this regard. The core of the Confrontation Clause, however, is the right to confront one’s accuser,21 and no one is more likely to be such an accuser than the alleged victim of a crime. To create a rule that exempts the primary accuser from questioning by the defendant serves only to gut the Confrontation Clause and the right to proceed pro se. For this reason, I respectfully dissent. Accordingly, I would reverse and remand this case to the trial court for a new trial.

. Although Appellant also has a right of self-representation under Section 11 of the Kentucky Constitution, for the sake of brevity, I will refer only to his Sixth Amendment right of self-representation.

. See, e.g., McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984); Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975); Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973); Mason v. Mitchell, 320 F.3d 604 (6th Cir.2003); Wake v. Barker, 514 S.W.2d 692 (Ky.1974).

. Faretta, 422 U.S. at 834, 95 S.Ct. at 2541 n. 46.

. Id. (second and third emphases added).

.McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 174, 104 S.Ct. at 949 (emphasis added); accord Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 1110, 39 L.Ed.2d 347, 353 (1974) ("Confrontation means more than being allowed to confront the witness physically.”); Chambers, 410 U.S. at 295, 93 S.Ct. at 1046 (1973) ("The right of cross-examination is more than a desirable rule of trial procedure.”).

. McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 177, 104 S.Ct. at 950.

. McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 178, 104 S.Ct. at 951.

. Faretta, 422 U.S. at 817, 95 S.Ct. at 2532.

. 410 Mass. 1, 570 N.E.2d 1384 (1991).

. Id. at 1390-91.

. See Fields v. Murray, 49 F.3d 1024 (4th Cir.1995); State v. Estabrook, 68 Wash.App. 309, 842 P.2d 1001 (1993); State v. Taylor, 562 A.2d 445, 453 (R.I.1989).

. See, e.g., Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 851, 110 S.Ct. 3157, 3167, 111 L.Ed.2d 666 (1990) (allowing child sex abuse victim to testify outside of the presence of the defendant because of the compelling state interest in protecting “minor victims of sex crimes from further trauma and embarrassment”).

. McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 177 n. 8, 104 S.Ct. at 950; accord Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 1833, 144 L.Ed.2d 35, 46 (1999) ("Indeed, we have found an error to be 'structural,’ and thus subject to automatic reversal, only in a ‘very limited class of cases’.... McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984) (denial of self-representation at trial)”).

. Faretta, 422 U.S. at 834, 95 S.Ct. at 2540.

. McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 179, 104 S.Ct. at 951.

. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 680, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1436, 89 L.Ed.2d 674, 684 (1986).

. Hill v. Commonwealth, 125 S.W.3d 221 (Ky.2004).

. Id. at 225 (quoting Wake v. Barker, 514 S.W.2d 692, 696 (Ky.1974)) (emphasis added).

. Mason v. Mitchell, 320 F.3d 604, 633 (6th Cir.2003).

. Wake v. Barker, 514 S.W.2d 692, 697 (Ky. 1974).

. California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 157, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 1934-35, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970) ("[I]t is this literal right to 'confront' the witness at the time of trial that forms the core of the values furthered by the Confrontation Clause.”).