State v. Quattrocchi

• Citation: 681 A.2d 879
• Decision Date: 31 July 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-343-C,95-343-C
• Parties: STATE v. John E. QUATTROCCHI. A.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Page 879

681 A.2d 879

65 USLW 2175

STATE v. John E. QUATTROCCHI.

No. 95-343-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 31, 1996.

Lauren Sandler Zurier, Special Asst. Atty. General, Aaron Weisman, Asst. Attorney General, for Plaintiff.

John A. MacFadyen, III, Providence, for Defendant.

OPINION

WEISBERGER, Chief Justice.

This case comes before us on the appeal of the defendant, John E. Quattrocchi, from a judgment of conviction entered in the Superior Court pursuant to a jury verdict finding him guilty of two counts of first-degree sexual assault in violation of G.L.1956 § 11-37-2, as amended by P.L.1981, ch. 119, § 1, and § 11-37-3. Following the verdict of the jury, the trial justice sentenced the defendant to two concurrent sentences of sixty years, with forty years to serve and twenty years' probation to follow his release on each count. In support of his appeal the defendant raises five issues. We sustain the appeal in part and remand the case to the Superior Court for a new trial. The facts of the case insofar as pertinent to this appeal are as follows.

The complaining witness, who shall be called Gina (a fictitious name), was nineteen years of age at the time of trial. She testified that in 1978, when she was between three and four years of age, defendant began dating her mother, whom we shall call Jane (also a fictitious name). Gina had never known her biological father, and consequently defendant came to fill the paternal role in Gina's life. This relationship continued between Gina and defendant for nearly ten years after he ceased dating her mother in 1981. The relationship was close and loving up until the end of Gina's junior year in high school. The defendant gave gifts to Gina, read to her, paid her private school tuition for two years of high school, attended school events with her, celebrated holidays with her, and encouraged her educational and career aspirations.

This idyllic relationship was shattered during the spring of 1992 when Gina was admitted to Butler Hospital twice in rapid succession because she was depressed and suicidal. For two years prior to her admission, she had been receiving psychological therapy for depression and severe mood changes. One incident involved an outburst of rage in which she threatened her mother, brandishing either a knife or a pair of scissors. During her out-patient treatment a variety of medications had been prescribed. The admitting diagnosis to Butler Hospital was bipolar disorder, a form of mental disorder sometimes described as manic depression.

During her admission at Butler Hospital, Gina experienced a series of "flashbacks" during which she recalled incidents of abuse by defendant during her childhood. These "flashbacks" were triggered by Gina's observing things that reminded her of an event that occurred during the abuse. Gina informed the staff at Butler Hospital about these flashbacks and as a result of this information her treating physician, Daniel Harrop, Ph.D. (Dr. Harrop), and other members of the staff reevaluated the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and substituted a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

At trial Dr. Harrop testified that the symptoms of bipolar disorder are similar to and overlap with symptoms associated with PTSD. The distinguishing feature is that bipolar disorder has a chemical basis and is congenital according to Dr. Harrop whereas PTSD is precipitated by traumatic stress or a traumatic event outside normal human experience. Such events would include automobile accidents, sexual abuse, combat experience, or some other situation in which the patient would feel seriously endangered.

It should be noted that while she was at Butler, Gina complained that she had been molested by another patient. After she was released from Butler for the second time Gina reported the previously repressed recollections of sexual abuse (which came to her in flashbacks) to the police department of the town of Lincoln, Rhode Island. This report was made in May 1992. Before reporting to the Lincoln police, Gina discussed these flashbacks and the remembered incidents of abuse with her mother. She and her mother consulted two attorneys concerning the possibility of a civil action against defendant. However, as of the time of trial she testified that she chose not to bring suit against defendant and, therefore, had not retained counsel. She further testified that by the time of trial she had ten or fifteen full memories of abuse by defendant in the form of flashbacks. Her flashback recollections include the two incidents upon which the indictment was based. One incident allegedly took place in Lincoln between May 1 and September 30, 1983. The other incident allegedly occurred on Narragansett Bay off Middletown between May 1, 1981, and September 30, 1982. Both incidents took place between ten and twelve years prior to the date of trial, which took place in June 1994. Gina testified concerning these incidents, and her testimony was corroborated by that of Dr. Harrop and also a psychiatric nurse, Karen Marie Kulik (Nurse Kulik), who had conducted therapeutic sessions with Gina while she was hospitalized at Butler during the months of March and April 1992. Nurse Kulik also testified concerning Gina's flashbacks and her being fondled by defendant.

Although defendant has raised five issues in support of his appeal, this court will consider only three of these issues and will provide further facts as may be necessary in order to discuss these issues.

I Flashbacks or Repressed Recollection

As late as 1991 Gina's relationship with defendant was extremely close and loving. She had no recollection of any sexual abuse by defendant prior to her admission to Butler Hospital. The events that underlay the two counts of the indictment in this case had been repressed during the intervening years between their occurrence and the flashbacks Gina experienced during her Butler Hospital admission and the further flashbacks that occurred subsequent to her release from Butler. The defendant objected to the admission of testimony relating to these flashbacks and also to the expert medical testimony of Dr. Harrop and Nurse Kulik by a motion in limine. In support of the motion defendant submitted memoranda of law that raised questions of bolstering and also challenged the reliability of Gina's flashback memories. In one memorandum defendant compared psychodynamic therapy to hypnotically enhanced recollections and raised the issue of the validity and reliability of such therapeutic techniques. The defendant in one memorandum argued that such expert testimony should not be admitted.

The trial justice determined that both the flashback recollections of Gina and the expert testimony in corroboration thereof should be admitted before the jury. He did not hold a preliminary evidentiary hearing to determine the reliability and competency of such testimony, but he declared that the probative value of the evidence was a matter of weight to be considered by the jury.

Perhaps no area of the law has been more productive of controversy than that of the reliability and admissibility of testimony, expert and otherwise, relating to repressed recollection. This controversy has frequently arisen in the context of attempts to extend the statute of limitations in civil cases in circumstances when recollections have been repressed for many years and then released in the course of psychological treatment or psychiatric therapy. Such a case was Tyson v. Tyson, 107 Wash.2d 72, 727 P.2d 226 (1986). In that case a certified question was submitted to the court concerning whether the repression of recollection should toll the statute of limitations. This question was certified by the Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington in which a plaintiff had alleged sexual abuse against her father when she was between three and eleven years of age. Id. at 74, 727 P.2d at 227. She was twenty-six years of age at the time of filing the complaint. Id. The Supreme Court of Washington, in a sharply divided opinion, declined to extend the statute of limitations and to apply the discovery rule in relation to these repressed recollections. In so doing, the majority expressed serious doubts that the plaintiff's subjective claims could be supported adequately by treating psychological and psychiatric testimony. The majority held that such expert testimony "would not reduce, much less eliminate, the subjectivity of plaintiff's claim." 107 Wash.2d at 78, 727 P.2d at 229. The court went on to state:

"Psychology and psychiatry are imprecise disciplines. Unlike the biological sciences, their methods of investigation are primarily subjective and most of their findings are not based on physically observable evidence. The fact that plaintiff asserts she discovered the wrongful acts through psychological therapy does not validate their occurrence. Recent studies by certain psychoanalysts have questioned the assumption that the analyst has any special ability to help the subject ascertain the historical truth. See generally Wesson, Historical Truth, Narrative Truth, and Expert Testimony, 60 Wash.L.Rev. 331 (1985). These studies show that the psychoanalytic process can even lead to a distortion of the truth of events in the subject's past life. The analyst's reactions and interpretations may influence the subject's memories or statements about them. The analyst's interpretations of the subject's statements may also be altered by the analyst's own predisposition, expectations, and intention to use them to explain the subject's problems. Wesson, 60 Wash.L.Rev. at 334-37, 349-50. Thus,

the distance between historical truth and psychoanalytic 'truth' is quite a gulf. From what 'really happened' to what the subject or patient remembers is one transformation; from what he remembers to what he articulates is another; from what he says to what the analyst hears is another; and from what the...