State v. Vaughn

• Decision Date: 17 October 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-KA-1775,82-KA-1775
• Citation: 448 So.2d 1260
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. John VAUGHN.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 1260

448 So.2d 1260

STATE of Louisiana v. John VAUGHN.

No. 82-KA-1775.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Oct. 17, 1983.

Dissenting Opinion Oct. 28, 1983.

Concurring Opinion Nov. 7, 1983.

On Rehearing April 2, 1984.

Rehearing Denied May 3, 1984.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Edwin O. Ware, Dist. Atty., G. Earl Humphries, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

James S. Gravel, Harold A. Van Dyke, Gravel & Van Dyke, Alexandria, for defendant-appellant.

DENNIS, Justice. ^*

We are called upon in this case to decide whether the Confrontation Clauses require that a defendant in a criminal case be allowed to impeach the credibility of a prosecution witness, by cross-examination directed at an established pattern of her prior sexual conduct which tended to prove that she also consented to the conduct in issue, when such an impeachment would conflict with the state's asserted interest in the encouragement of rape victims to report crimes and cooperate in prosecutions.

Defendant, John Vaughn, was indicted with aggravated rape, convicted by a jury of forcible rape, and sentenced to 15 years at hard labor, five years of which are without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. Defendant appealed. We reverse, finding merit in his confrontation claim.

Defendant contends that he was denied his right to confront and cross-examine witnesses by the trial court's preclusion of his cross-examination of the rape complainant about her prior sexual conduct. He argues that this constitutes reversible error because it prevented the introduction of evidence which, together with the complainant's other admissions, would have shown that the sexual intercourse in question was with her consent. In order to convict of aggravated rape, the state must prove that the sexual intercourse was committed without the victim's consent. La.R.S. 14:41, 42.

About two weeks before the alleged offense the 15 year old female complainant ran away from home. She had lived with her mother who ran a lounge with a boyfriend in Shreveport. After staying with some friends for about a week in Shreveport, the complainant left that city on Friday, September 12, 1980 with Bret Holden, whom she had met that day at a K-Mart, and a girl friend. Holden told the two young women that he was going to Alexandria and that he could find them a place to stay there. The trio hitched a ride with a trucker and eventually arrived in Alexandria. After reaching Alexandria the complainant spent at least one night in a cabin with Holden and another man. On Sunday, a couple with whom she had become acquainted took her to see the defendant Vaughn for the purpose of obtaining more permanent lodging. Vaughn permitted her to move into his house, provided her with food, and allowed her to call her mother on his telephone without giving her location. Vaughn also obtained an apartment which the complainant and another woman used during the day. At night, however, the complainant returned to Vaughn's house where she voluntarily slept with him and two other women in the same bed.

The complainant admitted in her cross-examination that she had sexual intercourse with Vaughn on the night of September 15 and that she consented to the sexual act. She testified that during the early morning hours of September 18, however, she resisted his sexual advances, and that he forced her to have sexual intercourse without her consent by kicking her, knocking her against a dresser and pulling her hair. She further testified that later that evening she again consented to sexual intercourse with Vaughn, but she said that she consented only because she feared another beating. During the day on September 18, after the early morning sexual intercourse with Vaughn and before the second act of sexual intercourse with him that evening, the complainant took a short trip with another man to Lafayette. When asked why she did not take this opportunity to remove herself permanently from Vaughn's house, she answered that she wanted to return there for her clothing.

During his cross-examination of the complainant the defense counsel was prevented, by state objections sustained by the court, from inquiring into her prior sexual conduct with another man in Grant Parish while she was en route to Alexandria. Although the defense attorney apprised the trial court of the nature of the evidence and its relevance to the defense that the complainant had consented to the sexual intercourse at issue, the trial court accepted the prosecutor's contentions that such testimony should be excluded under the state's rape shield law.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of an accused in a criminal prosecution "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." This right is secured for defendants in state as well as federal criminal proceedings. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965). The confrontation clause of our state constitution directly affords each accused the right "to confront and cross-examine the witness against him, ..." La. Const. art. 1 § 16.

Confrontation means more than being allowed to confront the witnesses. Our state constitution expressly guarantees a defendant the right to cross-examine adverse witnesses. Id. The U.S. Supreme Court cases construing the clause hold that a primary interest secured by it is the right of cross-examination. Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 1110, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974) (citing Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 415, 418, 85 S.Ct. 1074, 1076, 13 L.Ed.2d 934 (1965). Cross-examination is the principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested. Subject always to the broad discretion of a trial judge to preclude repetitive and unduly harassing interrogation, the cross-examiner is not only permitted to delve into the witness's story to test the witness's perceptions and memory, but the cross-examiner has traditionally been allowed to impeach, i.e., discredit, the witness; Davis, supra, 415 U.S. at 316, 94 S.Ct. at 1110; State v. Hillard, 398 So.2d 1057 (La.1981); State v. Toledano, 391 So.2d 817 (La.1980).

The state contends that the cross-examination was correctly precluded under the rape shield law, La.R.S. 15:498, which provides:

Evidence of prior sexual conduct and reputation for chastity of a victim of rape or carnal knowledge shall not be admissible except for incidents arising out of the victim's relationship with the accused.

The state further argues that the trial court ruling did not deprive Vaughn of his right to confront and cross-examine his accuser.

Notwithstanding worthy legislative aims, rules excluding evidence cannot be mechanistically applied to deny admission of highly reliable and relevant evidence critical to an accused's defense. See Davis, supra; Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973). Although the Supreme Court's cases fail to provide any rule for determining when the Sixth Amendment compels the admission of evidence, they imply that a "balancing of interests" approach to each case should be used to reconcile the competing interests involved. Davis, supra, 415 U.S. at 319, 94 S.Ct. at 1112; State v. Dawson, 392 So.2d 445, 449 (La.1980); State v. DeCuir 364 So.2d 946, 948-949 (La.1978) (concurring opinion); Note, 40 La.L.Rev. 268, 274 (1979).

By excluding evidence of a rape complainant's reputation for chastity or sexual conduct with any person other than the accused, La.R.S. 15:498 serves important goals: it abates the victim's ordeal at trial, lessens the possibility of unjust influence by inflammatory evidence, and encourages reports of rape. Thus, in balancing the invocation of the shield against the right of confrontation in a particular case, the shield should be given weight according to the degree to which it fulfills the purposes of the rape shield law in that case. Against this in each case must be weighed the extent to which the rape shield would exclude evidence which is genuinely relevant, highly probative, and critical to the accused's defense. If the rape shield law in the particular case fails to serve its purpose, overreaches its legitimate aim, or trenches upon the right to a fair trial, it must yield to the confrontation guarantees of our state and federal constitutions.

Applying this balancing approach, we conclude that the defendant was deprived of his constitutional right to confront and cross-examine witnesses because the cross-examination attempted by defense counsel was reasonably calculated to elicit evidence which was genuinely relevant, highly probative, and critical to the defense; and because the rape shield law did not fully serve its purposes in this case. The excluded evidence would have tended to demonstrate the complainant's sexual promiscuity in the course of her running away from home. This evidence would have tended to show that her sexual intercourse with Vaughn was a part of this same pattern and was committed in furtherance of her running away from home. For this reason, and because she freely admitted to at least one act of consensual intercourse with Vaughn, the excluded evidence was highly probative of the proposition that each of her acts of intercourse with Vaughn was consensual. On the other hand, exclusion of the evidence in this case did not significantly promote the legitimate state interest in encouraging rape reports by insulating a rape victim's reputation for chastity from attack by evidence of sexual misconduct unrelated to the offense. Evidence of the complainant's conduct in engaging in the initial consensual act of intercourse with Vaughn, sleeping with him and two other women in the same bed, traveling with casual male acquaintances, and spending the night with two of them in a cabin was introduced without objection. Consequently, the complainant's reputation for chastity was discredited by...