People v. Williams

• Decision Date: 11 May 1993
• Parties: , 614 N.E.2d 730 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Martin WILLIAMS, Appellant. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Otis FEARON, Appellant. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Bruce RICHARDSON, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 167

598 N.Y.S.2d 167

81 N.Y.2d 303, 614 N.E.2d 730

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Martin WILLIAMS, Appellant.

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Otis FEARON, Appellant.

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Bruce RICHARDSON, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

May 11, 1993.

[81 N.Y.2d 305] [614 N.E.2d 731] C. Vernon Mason and Valerie A. Hawkins, New York City, for appellant in the first above-entitled action.

[81 N.Y.2d 306] Slotnick & Baker (Mark M. Baker, Barry I. Slotnick and Lori E. Mann of counsel), New York City, for appellant in the second above-entitled action.

Richard E. Haftel, New York City, for appellant in third above-entitled action.

[81 N.Y.2d 307] Charles J. Hynes, Dist. Atty. of Kings County (Anthea H. Bruffee, Jay M. Cohen and Roseann B. MacKechnie of counsel), Brooklyn, for respondent in first, second and third above-entitled actions.

[81 N.Y.2d 308] Richard A. Brown, Dist. Atty. of Queens County (Barbara D. Underwood and Tammy J. Smiley of counsel), pro se, and Robert T. Johnson, Kew Gardens, for New York State Dist. Attys. Ass'n, amici

[614 N.E.2d 732] curiae in the first, second and third above-entitled actions

Bermingham, Cook & Mahoney, P.C., Buffalo (Mark J. Mahoney of counsel), for New York State Ass'n of Crim. Defense Lawyers, amicus curiae, in the first, second and third above-entitled actions.

[81 N.Y.2d 309] Lynn Hecht Schafran, Danielle Ben-Jehuda and Deborah Ellis, New York City, for NOW Legal Defense and Educ. Fund and others, amici curiae in the second above-entitled action.

OPINION OF THE COURT

SIMONS, Judge.

Defendants have been convicted of multiple counts of rape and sodomy in the first degree. The charges arose after a New Jersey woman alleged defendants forced her into a car outside a Manhattan dance club, took her to a Brooklyn apartment and there raped and sodomized her. At trial, defendants sought to introduce evidence purportedly showing that the woman had previously engaged in group sex. They contend that the trial court improperly applied the State's "rape shield law" (CPL 60.42) to deny their application, thereby depriving them of their Federal constitutional rights to present evidence and confront the witnesses against them. They also assign error to the trial court's refusal to instruct the jury expressly that acquittal was required if defendants held a mistaken belief that the complainant had consented to sexual relations. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgments 182 A.D.2d 733, 582 N.Y.S.2d 652, and we now affirm its order in each case.

I.

The complainant, 17 years old, first encountered the three teenage defendants on a street in Manhattan shortly after midnight on August 17, 1989. She and defendant Williams testified at trial and gave dramatically different accounts of what happened thereafter.

Complainant testified that she had come to New York City with a group of friends to go to a dance club and that around midnight, after she began to feel sick, she decided to wait for her companions in the car. A short time later, defendants struck up a conversation with her as she ran an errand to a nearby store and then asked her to accompany them to another club. She refused, but defendants continued to walk alongside her until they passed near defendant Richardson's car. There, defendants surrounded her and, according to her trial testimony, she felt she had no choice but to go with them. She testified that Williams told her, "If you listen, you won't get hurt." Later, in the car, Williams intimated that his two companions were armed.

With Richardson driving and Williams seated next to the complainant in the back seat, defendants took her on a ride through Manhattan and Brooklyn, ultimately arriving at Williams's Brooklyn apartment in the basement of his family's home. The complainant concedes that the conversation in the car was friendly--an attempt, she testified, to "get on their good side". The complainant testified that during the drive she repeatedly asked to be let out, but defendants refused. Once inside Williams's apartment, she attempted to flee but found the door locked. She was then forced to engage in acts of sexual intercourse and sodomy by Williams and the others. Afterwards, they all left together, and in the car Williams forced her to perform oral sex on him. She was finally allowed to leave the vehicle near a mass transit station, where she immediately reported the incident to a police officer.

Williams was the only defendant to take the stand. He testified that all the incidents of sexual contact were consensual. According to his testimony, the complainant voluntarily accompanied them to Brooklyn, was affectionate toward him in the car, was never held against her will and had several opportunities to leave the car. He stated that she freely consented to sex with him in a bedroom at the apartment and then agreed to have sex with each of his friends. Later, when defendants let her out of the car near the transit station, he believed she intended to catch a train back to Manhattan to meet her friends. There was testimony from other witnesses which was not conclusive of the ultimate facts but tended to support some of the details in Williams's account.

The jury credited the testimony of the complainant and convicted defendants of multiple counts of rape in the first degree (Penal Law § 130.35) and sodomy in the first degree (Penal Law § 130.50).

II.

Defendants challenge the trial court's application of the "rape shield law" (CPL 60.42) on both statutory and constitutional grounds. At trial, Fearon's defense counsel asked the court to admit evidence showing that the complainant, who is white, had previously engaged in consensual group sex with black males. He asserted that the evidence would be relevant "with regard to her [complainant's] motivation in terms of testifying" against defendants, who are black, and offered to submit the details of evidence to the court ex parte. After a colloquy with the defense and the prosecution, the court ruled the evidence was inadmissible without hearing it.

CPL 60.42 bars evidence of a complainant's past sexual conduct unless one of five statutory exceptions applies. The first four allow evidence of a complainant's prior sexual conduct in narrowly defined factual circumstances. The fifth, the only subdivision under consideration here, is a broader "interest of justice" provision vesting discretion in the trial court. Defendants' principal argument on this appeal concerns not the substance of the court's ruling but the procedure it followed prior to ruling that the evidence was not admissible under subdivision (5).

The subdivision allows evidence of prior sexual conduct to be admitted when such evidence

"is determined by the court after an offer of proof by the accused outside the hearing of the jury, or such hearing as the court may require, and a statement by the court of its findings of fact essential to its determination, to be relevant and admissible in the interests of justice" (CPL 60.42[5].

Defendants do not assert that a formal hearing must be held in every instance where the accused seeks to invoke the "interest of justice" clause, nor does the statute impose such a rigid requirement. Instead, defendants maintain that the procedure adopted here by the trial court denied them even the minimal statutory right to make "an offer of proof". They allege further the proceedings were so limited that they violated due process and arbitrarily deprived them of their Federal constitutional rights to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses in their own defense. Neither argument is persuasive.

New York's rape shield law, like similar statutes in 47 other States, ¹ was passed in response to concerns that testimony about the sexual past of the victims of sex crimes often serves solely to harass the victim and confuse the jurors (see, Mem. of Assemblyman Fink, 1975 N.Y.Legis.Ann., at 47-48). The statutes put to rest the now-discredited rationale that a victim's past "unchastity" is probative of present consent and recognized that such evidence is typically of little or no relevance and may seriously prejudice the prosecution of sex crimes (see, Ordover, Admissibility of Patterns of Similar Sexual Conduct: The Unlamented Death of Character for Chastity, 63 Cornell L.Rev. 90). At the same time, by providing exceptions to the general evidentiary prohibition of section 60.42, our Legislature acknowledged that there are instances where evidence of a complainant's sexual history might be relevant and admissible.

The exceptions also recognize that any law circumscribing the ability of the accused to defend against criminal charges remains subject to limitation by constitutional guarantees of due process and the right to confront the prosecution's witnesses (U.S. Const. 5th, 6th Amends.; Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923; Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019; see also, Tanford and Bocchino, Rape Victim Shield Laws and the Sixth Amendment, 128 U.Pa.L.Rev. 544). The Supreme Court, in affirming that a defendant's "right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense * * * is a fundamental element of due process of law" (Washington v. Texas, supra, at 19, 87 S.Ct. at 1923), has held in a variety of circumstances that certain State rules restricting evidence were unconstitutional either on their face or as applied. For example, in Washington v. Texas (id.), a State law prohibiting a coparticipant in crime from testifying for the defense was declared unconstitutional; in Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347; the Court found that the defendant's rights were violated by a State law that prevented his attorney from impeaching a prosecution witness with the witness's juvenile record (see also, Olden v. Kentucky, 488 U.S. 227, 109 S.Ct. 480, 102...