Commonwealth v. David Ramsey, June 3, 2010
Medical Record, First Complaint, Hearsay, Witness Credibility
A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of incest, and acquitted him of rape of a child. On appeal, the defendant complained of multiple violations of the first complaint rule. He also asserted error in the exclusion of an alleged recantation, the improper questioning of a witness, and exclusion of a journal kept by the complainant. The Appeals Court reversed because of the erroneous admission of some portions of the complainant’s hospital records.
The complainant, Jane, was the Commonwealth’s principal witness, and she testified to sexual abuse by the father for a long period of time. Additional Commonwealth witnesses included the complainant’s former boyfriend (agreed by the parties, pretrial, as the first complaint witness), a friend of the complainant’s, two police officers, and two social records. Medical records from two hospitals were also admitted.
The combined records from the two hospitals totaled more than eighty pages, and contained allegations the complainant made to police officers and hospital staff that her father had repeatedly sexually abused her. The records included some 20 allegations of sexual abuse and conclusory statements of rape and incest (ex. “[Jane] has been raped by her father since age [twelve]” and “[i]ncest with father, long-term”). The statement “father admitted to this,” appears in at least 2 separate places in the medical records.
Questions submitted by the jury during deliberations revealed that they had focused their attention on a portion of the hospital records relating an admission by the defendant. The defendant denied making these admissions. After being given the Tuey-Rodriguez charge, the jury acquitted the defendant of rape, and convicted him on the charge of incest.
Admission of hospital records
The trial judge had ruled the medical records admissible prior to trial, concluding that the first complaint doctrine did not preclude admission because the records were admissible on other grounds. In response to the inclusion of the statement “father admitted to this” in the medical records, defense counsel requested a curative instruction stating that the defendant did not admit to the allegations. The judge refused to give this instruction.
On appeal, the Appeals Court held that the wholesale admission of Jane’s medical records contained multiple complaint testimony in violation of the first complaint doctrine.
The first issue is “whether the challenged testimony, viewed in the context in which it was offered, strayed beyond the permissible boundaries of the [first complaint] doctrine.” Commonwealth v. Arana, 453 Mass. 214, 222 (2009). By pretrial agreement, the ex-boyfriend was the designated first complaint witness. The hospital records, which contained additional complaints by Jane of abuse by her father, written statements of hospital personnel reiterating the complaints, and conclusory statements of rape and incest, were inadmissible as first complaint evidence.
The next issue is “whether evidence which was inadmissible as first complaint was nevertheless independently admissible in the judge’s discretion on the basis of some other evidentiary principle.” Id. at 224. The mere “existence of a potential alternative evidentiary basis for the admission of repetitive extrajudicial complaint evidence does not guarantee its admissibility.” Commonwealth v. Monteiro, 75 Mass. App. Ct. 489, 494 (2009). An inquiry into the testimony’s probative and prejudicial value must be made. It is within the judge’s discretion to admit testimony for reasons that are independent of the first complaint doctrine; however, the evidence must serve a separate function. Id. at 495.
In the present case, the judge did not first determine whether the testimony served a purpose other than corroborating the complainant’s testimony and then weigh its probative and judicial value. The medical records statute, a separate evidentiary principle, does not, on its own, constitute a separate purpose for admitting further complaint testimony. Even if there were a separate purpose for admitting the further evidence of complaint contained in the medical records, it was an abuse of discretion to admit the records in toto without any redaction or competent instruction to the jury.
Reviewing the case under the prejudicial error standard, the Appeals Court found that the erroneous admission of the medical records was inculpatory. The present case turned on credibility, and the admission of duplicative complaint evidence was likely highly prejudicial. The Appeals Court could not conclude “that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very slight effect,” and reversed the conviction. Commonwealth v. Flebotte, 417 Mass. 348, 353 (1994).
- Prepared by AYK
