State v. Hall

• Decision Date: 04 March 1974
• Docket Number: No. 1041--II,1041--II
• Citation: 10 Wn.App. 678,519 P.2d 1305
• Parties: The STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Eddie HALL, Appellant.
• Court: Washington Court of Appeals

Page 678

10 Wn.App. 678

519 P.2d 1305

The STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Eddie HALL, Appellant.

No. 1041--II.

Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 2.

March 4, 1974.

Kenneth D. Beyer, Olympia, for appellant.

Joseph D. Mladinov, Sp. Counsel to Pros. Atty., Pierce County, Tacoma (Ronald L. Hendry, Pros. Atty., with him on the brief), for respondent.

PEARSON, Chief Judge.

Defendant, Eddie Hall, appeals from a judgment and sentence for robbery following conviction by a Pierce County jury. A single issue is presented: Did the trial court err in refusing the admission of evidence to contradict an accomplice's testimony as to the presence of a third accomplice at the scene of the crime? We find no error.

On the evening of November 9, 1972 two men entered the Woodbrook Food Center in Pierce County. Their furtive actions aroused the suspicion of the proprietress, who summoned her husband by signal from a back room. He surveyed the situation, and returned to the back room to secure a gun.

Meanwhile, the two men approached the checkout counter. After going through the motions of making a purchase, one of them produced what appeared to be a gun and demanded money. The proprietress complied. Her husband then appeared and fired a shot at the gunman, who fled. The accomplice, Joe Nathan Alderson, remained in the store and was apprehended. After making a series of exculpatory statements, Alderson confessed his involvement in the robbery and implicated the defendant as the man who had accompanied him into the store. Alderson stated further that one Cleveland S. Reed had remained outside the store in a car, as a 'getaway' man.

At trial, the robbery victim identified the defendant as the perpetrator. Alderson testified that the defendant had instigated and participated in the robbery. Again he asserted the complicity of Cleveland S. Reed. (Reed was charged in the same information as was the defendant however, he had evidently left the state, and was unapprehended at the time of trial.)

Alderson was impeached on cross-examination in a number of respects--particularly with reference to the numerous inconsistent statements he made to the police about the circumstances of the robbery and his involvement in it.

During his case in chief the defendant offered certain medical records from Madigan hospital, ostensibly to show that Reed had been a patient in its 'contagious ward' on the night of the robbery. The obvious purpose of this offer was to contradict Alderson's testimony as to the involvement of a third accomplice, and accordingly to further undermine his credibility. The defendant's sole assignment of error relates to the trial court's rejection of this proposed evidence.

In support of the trial court's ruling, the state urges that the proposed contradiction was upon a collateral matter, properly excludable on that ground alone. It is a well recognized rule that a witness cannot be contradicted or impeached by the use of facts collateral to the issue. The test for determining whether or not a fact is a collateral matter has been set out in a number of cases: 'Could the fact, as to which error is predicated, have been shown in evidence for any purpose independently of the contradiction?' State v. Sandros, 186 Wash. 438, 443, 58 P.2d 362, 365 (1936); State v. Kritzer, 21 Wash.2d 710, 152 P.2d 967 (1944); State v. Gilmore, 42 Wash.2d 624, 257 P.2d 215 (1953); State v. Oswalt, 62 Wash.2d 118, 381 P.2d 617 (1963). See 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1003 (Chadbourn rev. 1970).

The issue of Reed's presence in the hospital on the night of the robbery would appear to be collateral under this definition. However, there are certain facts which relate directly to a witness's opportunity to observe, or knowledge of facts closely connected with the alleged offense that cannot properly be deemed collateral.

As said by Wigmore with respect to this class of facts:

(A)ll facts which bear upon the position, distance, and surroundings, the bystanders and their conduct, the time and the place, the things attracting his attention, and similar circumstances, said by the witness to have been observed by him at the time of observing the main event testified to by him, are material to his credit in so far as they purport to have formed a part of the whole scene to his observation; thus, if an error is demonstrated in one of the parts observed, the inference (more or less strong) is that his observation was erroneous (or his narration manufactured) on other and more important parts also.

3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1005, 972 (Chadbourn rev. 1970).

Thus a witness may be contradicted in his assertion that an accomplice aided the defendant at the scene of the crime--the testimony relating to the very essence of the transaction itself. See 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1005(f) (Chadbourn rev. 1970) and cases cited. ¹

In our opinion this rule is even more persuasive where the witness himself is an accomplice. His testimony as to the complicity of a third person at the scene of the crime, in...