Walter v. State
| Decision Date | 02 November 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 814,814 |
| Parties | JOSEPH WALTER v. STATE OF MARYLAND |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
CRIMINAL LAW -- OFFICIAL EXPRESSIONS OF DISBELIEF IN SUSPECT'S STATEMENTS
It is within the jury's sole province to assess the credibility of a witness. At trial, a witness may not offer an opinion about a person's credibility. Similarly, at trial, a prosecutor may not ask a criminal defendant whether another witness is lying.
The prohibitions on offering opinions about credibility or asking whether a person is lying do not strictly apply to questions posed by an investigator to a criminal suspect. Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals has held that if the jury hears a recorded interview with a criminal defendant, in which the investigators express their disbelief in the defendant's statements or their opinions that the defendant is lying, or ask the defendant whether others are lying, the suspect may be deprived of his or her due process right to a fair and impartial trial. Crawford v. State, 285 Md. 431 (1979). This Court has held that official expressions of disbelief in a defendant's statements are inadmissible. Casey v. State, 124 Md. App. 331 (1999).
In this case, the prosecution played a recorded interview between a detective and defendant. In the interview the detective asked whether the victim was known to be a liar, asked why the victim was suddenly accusing the defendant of sexually assaulting her years earlier, repeatedly expressed her opinion that the defendant had committed various sexual offenses against the victim, and voiced her disbelief in his statements. The detective went on to say that "somewhere between" the victim's account and the defendant's account "is the truth." The defendant moved that those comments be redacted from the interview before it was played for the jury. The circuit court denied his motion.
The circuit court erred in not redacting the detective's official expressions of disbelief. Assuming that the detective's comments had some theoretical relevance in supplying context for the defendant's subsequent answers, any probative value associated with her comments was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Md. Rule 5-403. The detective's questions and expressions of disbelief did not impel the defendant to inculpate himself or alter his account. Instead, the defendant remained steadfast in his denial of culpability. The detective's expressions of disbelief had little effect other than to cast an aura of official skepticism over the defendant's declaration of his innocence.
The error was not harmless. The State's case depended largely on the victim's credibility, which had been drawn into question. The jury verdict has aspects of a compromise. On these facts, this Court cannot say that the error in admitting the detective's official expressions of disbelief was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
EXPERT TESTIMONY - SUFFICIENCY OF FACTUAL BASIS; RELEVANCE
Expert testimony must be appropriate on the particular subject by giving appreciable help to the trier of fact in understanding the evidence. Despite being general in nature, an expert's testimony regarding the phenomenon of delayed reporting of sexual abuse gave appreciable help to the factfinder about a subject that is not within a layperson's knowledge.
To be admissible, expert testimony must have a sufficient factual basis, including an adequate supply of data and a reliable methodology. Personal experiences may be sufficient to provide an adequate supply of data. In this case, however, the testimony did not disclose whether the expert used a reliable methodology in evaluating the personal experiences that formed the basis of her opinion.
Expert testimony on delayed disclosure in a child sexual abuse case is relevant to assist the trier of fact in why a young victim might not report abuse until years after it occurred. The probative value of testimony on the existence of the psychological phenomenon of delayed reporting is not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, because the expert did not testify that the jury should believe the victim's testimony over the defendant's testimony.
LAY OPINION TESTIMONY - PERCEPTION OF THE WITNESS
Testimony from a lay witness that the defendant looked "like he's trapped" is rationally based on his perception of the defendant's conduct within the meaning of Maryland Rule 5-701. Testimony describing the defendant's conduct and appearance was more efficient than requiring the witness to identify each observation that led him to his conclusion that the defendant looked "trapped." The trial court did not err when it admitted that lay opinion testimony.
Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County
REPORTED
Opinion by Arthur, J.
Following a three-day jury trial in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, appellant Joseph Walter was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, but acquitted of second-degree rape and of committing a third-degree sexual offense. The court sentenced Walter to 20 years' imprisonment and required him to register as a sex offender. He noted this timely appeal.
Because we conclude that the court erred in allowing the jury to view the portions of a recorded interview in which a police detective repeatedly expressed her disbelief of Walter's claims of innocence and her opinions concerning his guilt, we reverse the conviction and remand for a new trial. We address several other matters to provide guidance on remand.
In the summer of 2012, M., then 12 years old,1 lived with her two half-brothers, her mother ("Mother"), and her stepfather ("Stepfather"). While M., her younger brothers, and Mother visited family members for a month, Walter, who is Stepfather's brother, began living in M.'s family home.
M. and the other family members returned to Maryland shortly before school started. M. testified that she was "very close" to Walter at that time and that she would spend time together with him and his son.
According to M., one night while Walter was staying at the house, she had a nightmare. She asked Walter to come into her room. They lay down in her bed. He was "probably" wearing boxers; she was wearing sweat pants. She told him that she was going to bed, and he left. He did not touch her inappropriately.
At some point thereafter, M. testified, Walter came into her room again, at night, without an invitation, when the door was closed. He lay down behind her and touched her breast with his hand, outside of her clothing. He said nothing and got up and left.
The next night, she testified, Walter came into her room again, without an invitation, when the door was closed. He lay behind her and touched her breast and her buttocks, under her clothing. He got up and left again, saying nothing.
The following night, M. testified, Walter came into her room yet again, without an invitation, when the door was closed. He touched her breast and buttocks over her clothes while she was lying on her side in bed. At some point, she got to her feet, and he put his penis inside of her while she was standing. He ejaculated into a towel that came from the bathroom.
The next night, M. testified, Walter tried to come into her room again. In describing what happened next, M. testified: "I push him away and tell my mother." It is unclear from M.'s testimony what she told Mother, but a subsequent question implies that she said that Walter was trying to get into her room. The following day, Mother replaced the doorknob on M.'s door with a doorknob that had a lock. The next day, M. testified, Walter moved out of the house.
After Walter moved out, M. continued to see him, go to his house, and hang out with his son. She testified that she said nothing more about what Walter had done because she did not want to tear apart the family.
M. first told her parents about the abuse in early 2016.2 She had been out past curfew and was brought home by a police officer, who insisted on speaking with her father. She was very upset, was crying, and was afraid that she was going to get into trouble. At that moment, she told Stepfather that Walter "had sex with [her]." In her testimony, M. admitted that she had lied to her parents to get out of trouble.
M. testified that she and Stepfather waited a day before telling Mother about the abuse. At some point thereafter, they called the police. M. was punished for staying out past curfew.
On cross-examination, the defense elicited testimony suggesting that M. might not be an entirely reliable narrator. M. had initially told the police detectives that Walter had had sexual intercourse with her on two occasions, but at trial she admitted that that was "not true." She had falsely told the detectives that, on one occasion when Walter tried to enter her room, she had pushed back against the door, screamed, and woke up her mother, who had pushed Walter away. She had told Stepfather that Walter choked her, but at trial she denied having done so. At first, she had told the detectives that she was"terrified" of Walter and "didn't really talk to him"; in a later interview, after asking whether she could call Walter, she told the detectives that she had already called him and that he had told her that she was lying; but at trial she admitted that she had invented her account of the call and that no such call ever took place.3
The cross-examination of M. also suggested that she was having a great deal of trouble at school and at home when she first claimed that Walter had sexually abused her. She had been suspended from the eighth grade, apparently for bringing alcohol and a bong to school, and her grades were not good. She had been in trouble with the police, and she was having a hard time getting along with both of her parents. Her mother was at wit's end. She had been home-schooled for a while, and there was some discussion about sending her to school...
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