Bentley v. State

• Decision Date: 08 January 1965
• Docket Number: No. 498,498
• Citation: 397 P.2d 976
• Parties: Donald Allen BENTLEY, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.
• Court: Alaska Supreme Court

Page 976

397 P.2d 976

Donald Allen BENTLEY, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

No. 498.

Supreme Court of Alaska.

Jan. 8, 1965.

William J. Moran, Anchorage, for appellant.

James N. Wanamaker, Dist. Atty., and Dorothy Awes Haaland, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

Before NESBETT, C. J., and DIMOND and AREND, JJ.

DIMOND, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the superior court denying appellant's motion under Criminal Rule 35(b) to vacate and set aside sentence.

Appellant was convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon. At the trial the complaining witness, Omar, testified that in an altercation in a bar appellant had hit him in the stomach and that later Omar discovered he had been stabbed.

A prosecution witness, Mrs. Doreen Fambrough, testified that she saw appellant stab Omar with a knife. On cross examination Mrs. Fambrough at first denied, and then later admitted, having told appellant that she had never seen a knife. Mrs. Fambrough testified that what she told appellant was not true, and that she had made this statement to him for the purpose of leading him to believe that she wouldn't testify against him. Her objective in so misleading appellant was, according to her testimony, to ingratiate herself with appellant so that he would return $5,000 which he had obtained from her by beating her and by threats of further beatings.

Mrs. Fambrough's statements to appellant were made in the course of a conversation between them in a hotel room about two weeks following the stabbing of Omar. Appellant had arranged with a private detective agency to have a tape recording made of the conversation. At the trial appellant's counsel attempted to offer the entire tape recording in evidence for the purpose of impeaching Mrs. Fambrough. This offer was denied and the tape excluded from evidence by the court on the ground that under cross examination Mrs. Fambrough had admitted making the inconsistent statements regarding the stabbing, that these admissions had the effect of impeaching her, and that since she had been impeaching by her own admissions it would be pointless to introduce the tape in evidence.

The question of the admissibility of the tape recording was again considered by the court on appellant's motion to vacate sentence under Criminal Rule 35(b). The court found that in attempting to introduce the recording appellant's counsel was trying to get into evidence proof of specific acts of misconduct on Mrs. Fambrough's part, and the court held that this would have been in violation of a rule of evidence relating to impeachment of a witness which at the time of the trial was governed by a statute then in force. ¹ The court also found that as a practical matter it would have been impossible to separate a great deal of wholly irrelevant and prejudicial matter from the few inconsistent statements made by the witness on the tape recording, and that much of what was said in the conversation between appellant and Mrs. Fambrough was collateral to the issues of the trial. The court further stated that it was not convinced that the tape recording was reliable, because of the unusual circumstances under which the recording was made and because it contained only a part of the conversation between appellant and Mrs. Fambrough.

On this appeal the only point made by appellant is that the tape recording ought to have been allowed into evidence. On this question divergent views have been expressed by the courts and legal writers. One view is that once a witness admits having made a statement conflicting with his present testimony, that ends the inquiry and further proof of the conflicting statement should not be allowed. ² This view is espoused by Rpofessor McCormick. ³ On the other hand, the position taken by other courts is that even where a witness admits having made a contradictory or inconsistent statement, that should not prevent the introduction of the statement in evidence for impeachment purposes. ⁴ This is the view adopted by Professor Wigmore. ⁵

We believe that the latter view which would permit introduction of the tape recording should govern in the circumstances of this case. This is a criminal matter where a man's liberty is at stake. Omar testified that appellant hit him in the stomach, but that he didn't know until later that he had been wounded. Appellant denied having hit or stabbed Omar. No other witness with the exception of Mrs. Fambrough testified that appellant had either hit or stabbed Omar. It seems apparent that the case against appellant to a large extent hinged on Mrs. Fambrough's testimony, because she is the only person who claimed to have seen appellant with a knife. Mrs. Fambrough's credibility, which was for the jury to determine, became an important factor in the case. Her credibility was undoubtedly impaired to some extent when she at first denied and then later admitted having told appellant that she had never seen a knife. But we think that the matter should not have ended there. The jury had the duty of appraising Mrs. Fambrough's trustworthiness. Such an appraisal might have been made with far greater discrenment if the jury had been permitted to hear the taped conversation rather than being limited to hearing only Mrs. Fambrough's simple, unemphatic admission that she made a statement to appellant which was inconsistent with her testimony at the trial. The jury ought to have had the opportunity to consider the circumstances in which Mrs. Fambrough conversed with appellant and to weigh what she actually greater discernment if the jury had been in order, if possible, to ferret out every detail of the motive which induced her to say to appellant that she had not seen a knife and then to tell the jury that she had seen one. ⁶ Such an opportunity was not available to the jury from the cross examination of Mrs. Fambrough to as great an extent as it would have been if they had been permitted to consider the tape recording. We hold that appellant was entitled to have the recording considered by the jury because it would have best informed the jury as to the recording's impeaching weight and significance.' ⁷

The admissibility of the recording is not barred by the possibility that it would have tended to show specific acts of misconduct on Mrs. Fambrough's part. The primary objective of introducing the recording was not to show acts of misconduct, but to allow the jury to give a discriminating appraisal to the witness's trustworthiness in the light of her contradictory statements. If acts of misconduct are also suggested or established from the conversation between the witness and appellant, this would be merely incidental and should not prevent the primary and legitimate objective of impeachment by inconsistent statements from being accomplished. For the same reason the fact that some of the conversation deals with collateral matters does not mean that the recording must be excluded. The admitted contradiction to Mrs. Fambrough's testimony regarding the knife relates not to a collateral matter but to the incrimination of appellant for the very crime with which he was charged. It would be only if the recording dealt merely with immaterial matters that it would not be admissible. ⁸

Finally, we are not pursuaded that the tape should have been excluded because of the court's lack of conviction that the recording was reliable. The making of the recording was testified to by the person who made it, and Mrs. Fambrough was willing to admit everything that was on the tape even though she could not remember word for word what was said. It is true that from reading the transcript of the recording it appears that it contained only a part of the conversation between appellant and Mrs. Fambrough. But that doesn't mean that it should be excluded. This is merely another factor for the jury to consider in considering the impeaching weight and significance of the recording.

In support of the lower court's decision not to allow the jury to consider the tape recording, the state relies upon our decision in Patterson v. Cushman. ⁹ In that case which involved a car striking a child a witness testified that he had seen the child walking with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot in the street and then stumbling out into the street where he came into contact with the defendant's car. The witness was then shown a prior written statement, which he admitted having made, where he failed to say how the child got off the curb. The trial court excluded the statement from evidence and we held that this was not error, saying:

'Redman admitted making the statements contained in the writing in question. That ended the inquiry. The material portions of the statement had been read to the jury, leaving no need for further proof on the subject. [citing cases] The written statement would not have contradicted Redman any more than his admission had already done.' [Citing cases. ¹⁰

The Patterson case is not authority for the proposition now advanced by the state. There the material portions of the witness's statement had been read to the jury, whereas here that was not done. In addition, we cannot say here, as we did in Patterson, that Mrs, Fambrough's conversation with appellant would not have contradicted her any more than did her admission that she had made certain statements to appellant in the course of their conversation. It is possible that the actual conversation between the parties might have convinced a jury that a witness who told such differing tales could not be believed on any occasion and that it was unsafe to base a conviction largely on that witness's testimony. ¹¹ We believe that the court's error in...