Court Opinion

ID: 9721286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:55:12.293882+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:24.514005
License: Public Domain

DIANE S. SYKES, J.
¶ 74. (concurring). The question in this case is whether the trial court's discretionary decisions on certain evidentiary issues deprived the defendant of his right to present a defense under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. I agree completely with the majority's resolution of the rape shield law issue under State v. Pulizzano, 155 Wis. 2d 633, 456 N.W.2d 325 (1990).
¶ 75. I also agree generally with the majority's analysis of the trial court's decision to exclude the defense expert witness under Wis. Stat. § 907.02. Adaptation of the Pulizzano approach for purposes of the expert witness issue in this case provides a reasonable enough method by which to balance the defendant's right to present a defense against the state's interest in controlling the reliability and fairness of the criminal trial process through the rules of evidence.
¶ 76. I write separately to emphasize my concern about constitutionalizing the multitude of discretionary evidentiary decisions that occur on a daily basis in criminal trials in the circuit courts of this state. In that sense, I agree with the dissent's position that we generally should not require circuit court judges to engage *536in convoluted "mental gymnastics, in order to issue decisions on the admissibility of evidence." Dissent at ¶ 90. But for the constitutional dimension to the expert witness issue in this case, the circuit court's refusal to admit the defense expert's testimony under Wis. Stat. § 907.02 would easily be upheld on the deferential "erroneous exercise of discretion" standard of review.
¶ 77. In my view, the constitutional issue comes into play here not merely because this is a criminal case and the accused has a "right to present a defense" pursuant to the due process, confrontation, and compulsory process guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Otherwise, almost every evidentiary ruling in a criminal case could be said to have constitutional implications.
¶ 78. Rather, the constitutional issue arises because the defense expert's testimony, excluded by the circuit court's application of the expert witness rule, implicated a "weighty interest of the accused" and significantly undermined a fundamental element of the defense within the meaning of Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 58 (1987), Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302-03 (1973), Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 22-23 (1967). See United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 308, 315 (1998).
¶ 79. The defendant's fate in this case depended almost entirely on the jury's evaluation of Kayla's recantation. The outcome of the case turned on the believability of Kayla's prior out-of-court statement that the defendant had improperly touched her, which the jury had to reconcile against her in-court denial that any improper touching had occurred. The State introduced the testimony of two experts in an attempt to put the recantation issue into a "scientific" context: a social worker who testified about certain statistical *537findings regarding recantation in child abuse cases, and the protective services investigator who had interviewed Kayla and who vouched for the reliability of the "cognitive graphic" interview technique he had used to interview the little girl.
¶ 80. The proposed defense expert, while not a specialist in the phenomenon of child abuse recantation, was a licensed physician with 33 years experience in psychiatry and neurology, including at least some experience treating victims of child abuse, mostly as adults. He was generally familiar with literature on sexual abuse, and had undertaken some study of the recantation issue in preparation for trial. Ninety percent of his clinical practice involved interviewing patients. He was to offer rebuttal testimony to the State's experts on the reliability of interview techniques and the limitations of statistical data on recantation.
¶ 81. Given the critical importance of the jury's evaluation of Kayla's out-of-court accusation vis-á-vis her in-court recantation, and because the State had introduced expert testimony on the subject, the circuit court's otherwise discretionary decision to exclude the proffered defense expert took on a constitutional dimension. If it were not so central to the defendant's case, the decision whether to qualify the defense expert under Wis. Stat. § 907.02 could have gone either way and been upheld. It was a close judgment call. The objections to the expert's qualifications could reasonably be characterized as going to the weight of his testimony and not its admissibility. With the constitutional thumb on the scales, I agree with the majority that it was an erroneous exercise of discretion to exclude his testimony.
¶ 82. The dissent seems to suggest that evidence deemed inadmissible by a circuit court applying the *538rales of evidence is by definition irrelevant, and thus there can be no constitutional violation, because the right to present a defense does not include the right to present irrelevant evidence. Dissent at ¶¶ 86, 91. But evidence that is otherwise relevant and admissible is often excluded under the rules for reasons completely unrelated to considerations of actual factual relevancy — reasons usually related to reliability and fairness (e.g., hearsay, character evidence, evidence protected by privilege). That certain evidence is inadmissible by operation of the rules does not necessarily make it irrelevant.
¶ 83. Here, the defense expert's testimony was highly relevant to the jury's evaluation of the core proposition in the case — the believability of Kayla's out-of-court accusation in light of her in-court recantation of it — and it was offered in response to the State's explanatory expert testimony regarding that proposition. Without it, the State's experts went unrebutted— the exclusion of the defense expert occurred in the middle of the trial, and the defense request for a continuance to secure another expert was denied. Under these circumstances, the circuit court's evidentiary ruling excluding the defense expert's testimony under Wis. Stat. § 907.02 was an erroneous exercise of discretion because it infringed upon a fundamental element of the defense and therefore violated the defendant's right to present a defense. See Rock, 483 U.S. at 58, Chambers, 410 U.S. at 302-03, and Washington, 388 U.S. at 22-23.
¶ 84. I am not convinced, however, that the multi-factor, Pulizzano-based inquiry must be undertaken any time a criminal defendant offers an expert witness. Not all defense experts can be said to implicate "weighty" interests of the accused or fundamental ele*539ments of the defense, and it is only when they do that scrutiny beyond the applicable evidentiary rule will be necessary. The standards articulated in Wis. Stat. § 907.02 are sufficient to accomplish the appropriate balancing of interests in the ordinary case. See Scheffer, 523 U.S. at 316 (a defendant is not deprived of his right to present a defense merely because a state or federal rule excludes evidence favorable to him.)
¶ 85. I would apply the test set forth in the majority opinion only when the proffered expert testimony is so clearly relevant to a central disputed issue in the case that its exclusion can reasonably be seen as implicating the constitutional right to present a defense. Where the proffered evidence is so centrally relevant, a constitutional question arises, and an evaluation of the relative necessity of the expert to the defendant's case as against the other interests at stake is appropriate in order to resolve it. Accordingly, I respectfully concur.