State v. Castro
| Decision Date | 24 November 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 1,CA-CR,1 |
| Citation | 788 P.2d 1216,163 Ariz. 465 |
| Parties | STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Jamie Andrew CASTRO, Appellant. 12318. |
| Court | Arizona Court of Appeals |
The defendant was charged by information with one count of sexual conduct with a minor, a class 6 felony. 1 A jury found him guilty as charged. Defendant was placed on supervised probation for one year and ordered to spend 180 days in jail as a probationary term. Defendant filed a timely notice of appeal. We conclude that the trial court impermissibly restricted defendant's right to cross-examine the prosecuting witness, and we reverse.
On December 27, 1985, police were called to the hospital to interview S., a seventeen-year-old girl. S.'s mother had found her hemorrhaging at home, and S. was transported to the hospital with no blood pressure and a very rapid pulse.
Initially S. claimed she was the victim of a rape and described her assailant in explicit detail. After extensive questioning, and after the medical personnel discovered that she had in fact suffered either a miscarriage or self-induced abortion, S. admitted that this account was a fabrication; eventually she implicated defendant as the man who had impregnated her.
The defendant had coached S. in weightlifting and body building for a period of months beginning in May of 1985. When they met, S. was sixteen and defendant was twenty-eight.
S. first claimed to have had intercourse with defendant only once, in August of 1985. Later, apparently after learning of medical evidence that her aborted fetus could not have been conceived that late, S. changed her story and alleged four or five sexual encounters with defendant in May, June, and July. She initially said the August encounter occurred late at night after a school dance, but later said it happened at 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon.
Before trial, the state asked the court to preclude defendant from introducing evidence of S.'s prior sexual history, pregnancy, or abortion. The trial judge granted the motions over defendant's objection.
On appeal, we consider these issues:
(1) Did the trial judge err in prohibiting evidence about the medical emergency that occasioned S.'s accusations against defendant?
(2) Did the trial judge err in prohibiting questions concerning the prior sexual conduct of the prosecuting witness?
(3) Did the trial judge err in allowing testimony about uncharged acts of sexual contact between defendant and the prosecuting witness?
We conclude that the trial court committed reversible error when it precluded defendant from presenting evidence of the medical emergency that occasioned S.'s accusations against defendant. We address other issues to guide the trial court on remand and to settle complex evidentiary issues that may recur.
The state moved in limine to preclude evidence of S.'s pregnancy and the circumstances of her abortion. The trial judge granted the motion, finding that both were irrelevant and, alternatively, that their prejudicial quality outweighed whatever probative value they might have. Defendant argues that this ruling unduly restricted his right to explore the background and motive for the prosecuting witness's accusation. We agree.
Defendant claimed that he never had sexual relations with S. and that her accusations were false. His theory, as we construe it, was that, after the medical emergency brought S.'s pregnancy to light, she felt a need to give an explanation that would deflect blame from herself. When it became apparent that her first explanation--rape by a stranger--failed to convince police, she needed to name someone. As the theory continues, she falsely named defendant either to protect the real father, to conceal that she had been promiscuous and could not identify the father, or to transfer blame to an older man likely to be viewed as a seducer. Central to defendant's theory was that S.'s entire story arose when, because of the medical emergency caused by the abortion, she was forced to explain her pregnancy.
Although a trial judge has discretion to decide the proper scope of cross-examination, unreasonable limitations can defeat a defendant's right to confrontation under the state and federal constitutions. State v. Dunlap, 125 Ariz. 104, 105, 608 P.2d 41, 42 (1980). Evidence that S. had been pregnant was material to the defense because it gave context to, and tended to show motive for, S.'s accusation. The court's initial refusal to permit evidence of pregnancy severely hampered defendant's ability to cross-examine S. and to explore her motive. See Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974).
An impairment of the right to confrontation may be harmless, however. State v. Wilhite, 160 Ariz. 228, 772 P.2d 582 (App.1989). And any prejudice to defendant from the court's pregnancy ruling was reduced when S. revealed her pregnancy on direct examination, apparently to the prosecutor's surprise. After this revelation, the defense urged the court to reconsider its earlier ruling. The court said:
[Defense counsel] can certainly ask her when she became pregnant or when she thought she became pregnant. That evidence is out, that question was asked, and you can go into the pregnancy. But I have told you you cannot go into the events of December 27; the placenta, the hemorrhaging, the blood, scissors, and that testimony.
Thus, the defense was permitted to inquire about the pregnancy, but remained foreclosed from establishing that the entire investigative sequence that culminated in S.'s accusation was launched by a medical emergency.
Evidence that S. had suffered a medical emergency was necessary to provide a context for her December 1985 disclosure of sexual relations four months before. The prosecutor himself expressed concern at a pretrial conference that the judge might be limiting the jury to a distorted picture of the case.
PROSECUTOR: A sexual act [that occurred] with this defendant on August 23, 1985, was reported ... by the victim on December 29, 1985, approximately four months later.
Now, as the Court is well aware, and counsel, it happened while the victim's life was in danger, having suffered an incredible loss of blood from a miscarriage that occurred at her home. In fact, she was given eight units of blood. She went into the hospital with no blood pressure and a very rapid pulse.
... I don't want to present the reporting of the sexual incident in a void or vacuum, because, certainly, counsel is entitled to bring out the fact that the act was not reported or disclosed by the victim until four months later. Then the court's ruling has eliminated the context or most of the context of that reporting.
(Emphasis added.)
Despite this argument, the court responded:
THE COURT: Now, you [the prosecutor] are either going to bring [in evidence of the medical emergency] or you are not. If you bring it in, [defense counsel] has a right to elaborate on it.
....
I am just going to suggest to you that you stay away from anything that has to do with the medical treatment. I would just say, when was this reported? It was reported on such and such a time. I think it would be more prejudicial than probative for you to start hedging around medical treatment now.
We are sensitive to the trial court's concern: evidence that S. had herself induced an abortion, and the details of that incident, could easily confuse or divert the jury. See, e.g., Rule 403, Arizona Rules of Evidence. As the trial court correctly stated, there was no need for the jury to hear of blood and scissors. On remand we leave to the court's discretion under Rule 403 the extent to which the details of S.'s medical emergency can be explored. However, we conclude that the defendant was entitled to show the jury, at a minimum, that S. was pregnant and that she accused the defendant of intercourse in the afterthroes of a medical emergency that entailed the termination of her pregnancy.
The defendant sought to introduce evidence that S. had sexual relations with persons other than himself. The trial court concluded that the evidence was inadmissible pursuant to State ex rel. Pope v. Superior Court, 113 Ariz. 22, 545 P.2d 946 (1976).
Our supreme court held in Pope that "[e]vidence tending to show [the prosecutrix's] unchaste reputation or prior unchaste acts is ... inadmissible for substantive purposes on the issue of consent...." Id. at 29, 545 P.2d at 953. Pope further condemned the attempt to use evidence of unchastity as character evidence of inveracity. The court stated:
Such evidence has little or no relationship to either the ability of the prosecuting witness to tell the truth under oath or her alleged consent to the intercourse. Any relevancy that may exist is outweighed by its inflammatory effect.
Later, our supreme court explicitly extended the Pope rule to child molestation cases. State v. Oliver, 158 Ariz. 22, 760 P.2d 1071 (1988). The court stated that Pope's concerns--that "requiring crime victims to defend every incident in their pasts will discourage prosecution" and that the "introduction of sexual histories might confuse the jury"--were just as valid in child molestation cases as in rape prosecutions. Oliver, 158 Ariz. at 27, 760 P.2d at 1076. Because these concerns are equally valid in cases alleging sexual conduct with a minor, we conclude that Pope is applicable to this case.
To conclude that Pope is applicable, however, is not the end...
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