Court Opinion

ID: 9491012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:01:07.955436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:27.425946
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in my brother’s opinion that allowing Elizabeth Teaehworth to testify by closed-circuit television violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, and adopt without hesitation his analysis of this constitutional error. I write separately simply to explain my own views as to why the error was not so harmless as to be ignored and why we must therefore reverse.
I.
A.
There is no question that when a defendant is wrongly denied his Sixth Amendment right to “a face-to-face meeting with witnesses appearing before the trier of fact,” Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012, 1016, 108 S.Ct. 2798, 2800-01, 101 L.Ed.2d 857 (1988), he has not been denied one of the small handful of “constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error,” Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 23, 87 S.Ct. 824, 827-28, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967); see Coy, 487 U.S. at 1021, 108 S.Ct. at 2803. Nonetheless, before a violation of the Confrontation Clause, or any other “federal constitutional error[,] can be held harmless, the [reviewing] court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24, 87 S.Ct. at 828. I find it noteworthy that here, the government has not even addressed the issue of harmlessness, even though, as “the beneficiary of the error,” it bears a burden “either to prove that there was no injury or to suffer a reversal of [the] erroneously obtained judgment.” Id. at 24, 87 S.Ct. at 828.
Implicit in the Court’s decision in Coy is a recognition that applying the harmless-error standard in a denial-of-eonfrontation situation presents something of a conundrum. The foundation of the confrontation guarantee is *903Coy, 487 U.S. at 1019-20, 108 S.Ct. at 2802-OS (citation omitted). In other words, the postulate is that in the absence of confrontation, a witness’s story may very well be substantively different, or perhaps simply less convincing, than if the witness must face the accused—and that the differences wrought by the absence of confrontation will be detrimental to the accused. And yet, despite this rationale, a court undertaking “[a]n assessment of harmlessness cannot include consideration of whether the witness’ testimony would have been unchanged, or the jury’s assessment unaltered, had there been confrontation,” because “such an inquiry would obviously involve pure speculation.” Id. at 1021-22, 108 S.Ct. at 2803. Therefore, “harmlessness must ... be determined on the basis of the remaining evidence.” Id. at 1022, 108 S.Ct. at 2803.
*902[t]he perception that confrontation is essential to fairness____ A witness “may feel quite differently when he has to repeat his story looking at the man whom he will harm greatly by distorting or mistaking the facts. He can now understand what sort of human being that man is.” It is always more difficult to tell a lie about a person “to his face” than “behind his back.” ... [E]ven if the lie is told, it will often be told less convincingly---- The State can hardly gainsay the profound effect upon a witness of standing in the presence of the person the witness accuses, since that is the very phenomenon it relies upon to establish the potential “trauma” that allegedly justified the extraordinary procedure in the present case. That face-to-face presence may, unfortunately, upset the truthful rape victim or abused child; but by the same token it may confound and undo the false accuser, or reveal the child coached by a malevolent adult.
*903B.
1.
Turning, then, to the evidence against Moses that remains after one puts to the side the testimony of Elizabeth Teaehworth, as indeed we must for the reasons so well explained by Judge Suhrheinrich, I find that evidence to be of negligible quality and quantity. Apart from Teachworth’s testimony, the only inculpatory evidence offered by the government was the testimony of officers from two different law enforcement agencies regarding Moses’ oral admissions of culpability, and Moses’s written confession.
To summarize that evidence, early in the day of June 30, 1994, Moses was questioned by tribal police; this was the second time they had questioned him, as on the first occasion he had denied any wrongdoing. On this occasion, however, he allegedly stated that he had taken Amber into the bedroom to change her diaper and “wipe her down,” and that in the course of doing this, he got “on the bed and in a kneeling position over Amber and ... rubbed his penis on the inside of Amber’s thigh and on Amber’s abdomen.” He also allegedly told the tribal police that “he put the head of his thing into Amber’s mouth.” The Michigan State Police then questioned Moses; according to Officer Simpson, one of the interrogators, Moses initially denied touching. Amber, but then “began making admissions.” Specifically, according to Simpson, Moses
eventually told [Simpson that] he took Amber into his girlfriend’s bedroom, he removed Amber’s diaper, he unzipped his pants, exposed his erect penis, rubbed it on her privates, her stomach, her mouth.
He told [Simpson] that he put his penis in Amber’s mouth.
. [Simpson] asked him how far, and he did a distance of ... approximately an inch. Then he put his fingers in the mouth, said this much____
[Simpson] asked him how long this incident occurred, he said about five to six minutes, until Elizabeth .,. came into the room where this was occurring and made the statement: What are you doing with my sister.
Mr Moses told [Simpson] that he just put his pants back on and went back out in the living room.
When asked by Simpson, Moses wrote and signed a confession that read as follows:
Me and Abmer was in The Bed room I had my Thing on Abmer & thing Eleabuth came in The room Thing we Quit and went in the Live room & my gril freind came home.
Simpson testified that he asked some questions to clarify this statement; underneath Moses’s writing is the following, written by Simpson:
. Q—Is your thing your penis?
A—Yes.
Q—Did you put your penis in her mouth? A—Yes.
Q—Did you rub your penis on Amber’s leg, chest and mouth?
A—Yes.
2.
The majority concludes that the admission of Teachworth’s testimony was not harmless in this context because it “question[s the] reliability” of the confessions—a conclusion it reaches based on certain social-science testimony presented by the defendant, to the *904effect that Native Americans are, as a group, unable “to deal with authority, confrontation, and stress.” (Maj. op. at p. 902.) I find the majority’s conclusion troubling. Concededly, the confession evidence is weak; Moses’s written confession is ambiguous at best, and only minimally consistent with the testimony regarding his oral confession. I note, however, that Moses did not challenge the admissibility of either the oral or written confession in the district court, and makes no such challenge in this appeal. It seems to me, therefore, inappropriate for this court'to pass on the reliability of the confessions.
And it is unnecessary for the court to do so.' The government’s evidence, once the unconstitutionally admitted testimony is set aside, was so insubstantial as to foreclose the conclusion that the constitutional error was harmless, beyond a reasonable doubt. As I have said, apart from Teachworth’s testimony, the only evidence the government introduced tending to show that Moses committed the crime charged was his own confession. But it has been indisputably established, in a long line of Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit cases, that a defendant’s confession, uncorroborated and standing alone, is not an adequate foundation for conviction. In Wong Sun v. United States, 871 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), for example, the Court discussed the “line of ... decisions [that] establishes that criminal confessions and admissions of guilt require extrinsic corroboration.” Id. at 488, 83 S.Ct. at 417-18.
It is a settled principle of the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts that a conviction must rest upon firmer ground than the uncorroborated admission or confession of the accused____
[T]he requirement of corroboration is rooted in “a long history of judicial experience with confessions and in the realization that sound law enforcement requires police investigations which extend beyond the words of the accused.”
Id. at 488-89, 83 S.Ct. at 417-18 (footnote and citation omitted). The reason underlying the principle is akin to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule:
“In our country the doubt persists that the zeal of the agencies of prosecution to protect the peace, the self-interest of the accomplice, the maliciousness of an enemy or the aberration or weakness of the accused under the strain of suspicion may tinge or warp the facts of the confession. Admissions, retold at a trial, are much like hearsay, that is, statements not made at the pending trial. They had neither the compulsion of the oath nor the test of cross-examination.”
Id. at 489, 83 S.Ct. at 418 (citation omitted). The rule is, nevertheless, distinct from the wholesale disallowance of involuntary confessions:
[Although separate doctrines exclude involuntary confessions from consideration by the jury, further caution is warranted because the accused may be unable to establish the involuntary nature of his statements. Moreover, though a statement may not be “involuntary” within the meaning of this exclusionary rule, still its reliability may be suspect if it is extracted from one who is under the pressure of a police investigation—whose words may reflect the strain and confusion attending his predicament rather than a clear reflection of his past.
Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 153, 75 S.Ct. 194, 197-98, 99 L.Ed. 192 (1954) (citations omitted).
Corroboration of a confession through extrinsic evidence that either “‘fortifies the truth of the confession’ ” or “ ‘independently establishes] the crime charged’”—in older parlance, the corpus delicti—is therefore required before a conviction may be validly obtained. Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 489, 83 S.Ct. at 418 (citation omitted). See generally Smith, 348 U.S. 147, 75 S.Ct. 194, 99 L.Ed. 192; Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 75 S.Ct. 158, 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954); United States v. Marshall, 863 F.2d 1285 (6th Cir.1988). Both varieties of corroborative evidence are lacking here.
To be sure, there is one item of evidence that could conceivably be viewed as corroborative. That is the testimony of Lisa Boll-man, the social worker who interviewed Elizabeth Teachworth regarding the suspected abuse of Amber Teachworth. However, the government did not call Bollman as a wit*905ness; strangely enough, Moses did. And it was Moses’s counsel who elicited the following hearsay testimony:
Q You asked Elizabeth what happened, Elizabeth said to you Uncle Scott showed his ding-ding; is that right?
A Correct.
Q You then asked Elizabeth who she— who he showed his ding-ding to and Elizabeth stated my sister.
A Correct.
Q At one point Elizabeth put her hand on her throat when you asked where Uncle Scott put his ding-ding; is that correct? A Correct.
This testimony appears to me to be inadmissible hearsay, not subject to any exception. For obvious reasons, its admission was not objected to by the government. And similar testimony, to which the defendant in turn did not object, was elicited by the government in its cross-examination.
But even if Bollman’s testimony were sufficiently corroborative to support the conviction—and coneededly, the hurdle is low—that does not mean that the introduction of Elizabeth Teaehworth’s testimony was harmless. That is, even if the government presented sufficient evidence independent of Elizabeth’s unconstitutional testimony to uphold Moses’s conviction under the “any rational trier of fact” standard imposed by Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), there can be no serious question that the evidence was no more than barely sufficient. I find it highly probable, in short, that Teaehworth’s dramatic, damaging, and unconfronted testimony tipped the scales in favor of a conviction. Accordingly, it is plain to me that the constitutional error in admitting the child's testimony was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
II.
To recapitulate then, there were three pieces of evidence in this trial that tended to show that Moses committed the crime with which he was charged: the unconstitutionally admitted testimony of Elizabeth Teachworth; the inadmissible, but not objected to, hearsay testimony regarding Teaehworth’s incriminar ting statements to Bollman; and the defendant’s confession. Without expressing an opinion as to the sufficiency of the evidence to convict Moses, since that is. not an issue before us, I am compelled to conclude that in the context of such an otherwise-insubstantial ease for the prosecution, the admission of Teaehworth’s testimony was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. I concur, therefore, in the judgment reversing Moses’s conviction.