State v. Parris

• Decision Date: 18 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. 13870,13870
• Citation: 219 Conn. 283,592 A.2d 943
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Robert T. PARRIS, Jr.

Page 943

592 A.2d 943

219 Conn. 283

STATE of Connecticut v. Robert T. PARRIS, Jr.

No. 13870.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 20, 1991.

Decided June 18, 1991.

Mark Rademacher, Hamden, for appellant (defendant).

Marjorie Allen Dauster, Deputy Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, were Mary Galvin, State's Atty., and Gerard F. Esposito, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (state).

Before PETERS, C.J., and SHEA, GLASS, COVELLO and BORDEN, JJ.

GLASS, Associate Justice.

The principal issue in this sexual assault case is whether the trial court improperly admitted the testimony of certain of the state's "constancy of accusation" witnesses without making a preliminary finding that the victim's statements to them had been made at a "natural" time. We conclude that such a finding is not a prerequisite to the admission of constancy evidence and therefore affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The defendant, Robert Parris, was convicted after a jury trial of one count of sexual assault in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-70(a), ¹ one count of sexual assault in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-71(a)(1), ² one count of risk of injury to a child in violation of General Statutes § 53-21, ³ and one count of kidnapping in the first degree in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-92(a)(2)(A) and (C). ⁴ The defendant was sentenced to a total effective term of twenty years imprisonment, execution suspended after fifteen years, to be followed by three years probation. This appeal followed.

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts. In March of 1986, when the victim was fourteen years old, she lived in an apartment building where the defendant also resided. On the evening of March 12, 1986, the defendant accompanied the victim to a friend's house. At some point during their return, he dragged her into an abandoned building known as the "fan gallery." The defendant then performed various sexual acts upon the victim, including intercourse, against her will.

The defendant's principal claim focuses upon the admission of the testimony of three of the four constancy of accusation witnesses called by the state at trial: Eric Sutherland, the victim's "close friend"; Fran Dwyer, who counselled the victim at a clinic; and Detective Patricia Miranda, to whom the victim officially reported the incident. Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress the testimony of these witnesses, as well as that of Geraldine Katz, the victim's school guidance counsellor who ultimately testified at trial, and Cindy Howell, an assault crisis counsellor who did not testify. The defendant argued that the victim's statements to all of the proposed witnesses should be excluded as hearsay, and advanced the related claim that her statements, made from approximately ten to nineteen months after the crimes, had not been made at a "natural" time. See State v. Ouellette, 190 Conn. 84, 99, 459 A.2d 1005 (1983). Alternatively, the defendant sought to limit the number of constancy witnesses permitted to testify, as well as the victim's testimony regarding the number of people to whom she had reported the incident, in view of the "prejudicial effect" of the testimony. The state countered that the challenged testimony was admissible under the constancy of accusation "exception to the hearsay rule," that the victim had made the statements at a "natural" time, and that the testimony was not more prejudicial than probative. In support of its contentions, the state offered the victim's voir dire testimony. The victim named all of the proposed witnesses as persons to whom she had reported the incident, gave reasons for her delay in making the reports, and described the circumstances that eventually had prompted her to make them. ⁵

After hearing the victim's testimony, the court found that while she normally would have reported such an incident to her mother, "she was afraid that her mother would not believe her." The court further surmised that "not reporting something like that ... because of the fear that she would be disbelieved as time went on [probably made it] more difficult to make the report. When the report was made, it was made to a Counsellor [Katz] after a presentation of a movie on the subject [sexual assault]. I think that would be a natural time for someone who had this on their mind for a considerable period of time to make the report." Accordingly, the court denied the defendant's motion. At trial, the victim testified on direct examination to the facts of the incident and stated that she had told her exboyfriend, Howell, Katz, Sutherland and Miranda that the defendant had sexually assaulted her. The state then called Sutherland, Dwyer, Katz and Miranda, who related the victim's statements about the incident in varying degrees of detail. ⁶

On appeal, the defendant argues that the court improperly: (1) admitted the testimony of Sutherland, Dwyer and Miranda without making a preliminary finding that the victim's statements to them had been made at a "natural" time; and (2) refused to restrict the number of the state's constancy witnesses, as well as the victim's testimony regarding the number of people to whom she had reported the incident, despite the "prejudicial effect" of the testimony.

I

The defendant first attacks the court's failure to make a preliminary finding, before admitting the testimony of Sutherland, Dwyer and Miranda, that the victim's statements to them had been made at a "natural" time. In the defendant's view, the court found only that the victim's statements to Katz had been made at a "natural" time, and in the absence of a similar finding regarding her statements to Sutherland, Dwyer and Miranda, their testimony should have been excluded, and his conviction accordingly should be reversed, under the authority of State v. Ouellette, supra. We disagree.

In State v. Ouellette, supra, at 99, 459 A.2d 1005, this court indicated that before constancy of accusation evidence can be admitted, "the trial court must find, under the circumstances in each case, first that the statement was made at a time when it was natural to make it; second that the witness has been impeached by a suggestion of recent contrivance." ⁷ The Ouellette court provided two grounds for this dual prerequisite to the admission of constancy evidence. First, the court determined that because the rationale for admitting such evidence ⁸ "is essentially the same as that ... for admitting prior consistent statements to counter a suggestion of recent contrivance or fabrication," there was "no analytical reason" to approach the two kinds of evidence differently. Id. Second, the court concluded that analyzing constancy evidence in a manner analogous to prior consistent statements to counter a suggestion of recent fabrication would reduce "the confusion surrounding the admissibility of constancy of accusation evidence...." Id.

While phrased in terms of a rule to be applied in future cases involving constancy of accusation evidence, however, the prerequisite announced in Ouellette was not essential to the outcome of that case. The constancy of accusation doctrine ultimately was found inapplicable in Ouellette because the victim's disputed statement "did not concern the crime charged and was therefore not an 'accusation'...." Id., at 100, 459 A.2d 1005. Consequently, the prerequisite was merely dictum, without the force of precedent insofar as proper constancy evidence is concerned. "[T]he precedential value of a decision should be limited to the four corners of the decision's factual setting." ⁹ Id., at 91, 459 A.2d 1005.

Moreover, were we to adopt the Ouellette dictum by applying it in this case, our decision effectively would overrule a long line of precedent in the constancy of accusation context with which that dictum directly conflicts. The decisions of this court predating Ouellette, for example, did not condition the admission of constancy evidence upon a court's finding that the victim's statements had been made at a "natural" time. Rather, the admission of such evidence was approved "when the complainant first has testified, in court, to the facts of the alleged occurrence.... She is then permitted to state that she made complaint to some other person. ¹⁰ Thereupon the person to whom she complained, out of court and in the absence of the defendant is permitted to testify not only to the fact that a complaint was made but also to its details." State v. Segerberg, 131 Conn. 546, 548-49, 41 A.2d 101 (1945); see State v. Brice, 186 Conn. 449, 453-54, 442 A.2d 906 (1982).

Furthermore, contrary to the dictum in Ouellette, the term "natural" as employed in our prior caselaw was not connected to any preliminary issue of admissibility for the trial court's resolution. That term merely represents the phenomenon of human behavioral expectations that lends corroborative force, on one hand, to a sexual assault victim's report of the fact of the incident and its details to another, and lends impeaching force, on the other hand, to the victim's failure to make such a report or include particular details in a report made. In an early decision, this court explained the corroborative quality of constancy evidence and the impeaching quality of the lack thereof as follows: "Why has the rule been adopted that in prosecutions for rape, and for attempts to commit rape, the public prosecutor may show that the woman on whom the assault was made complained of it to her friends? It is simply because such a course would be natural if the crime had been committed, but very unnatural if it had not been. But her natural impulses would prompt her to tell all the details of the transaction. Why, on the same principle, ought not her statement of the details to be evidence? ... If her story were true, the evidence would show constancy in the charge even to the details, and the truth [of her testimony] would...