People v. Halter

979 N.E.2d 1135, 19 N.Y.3d 1046
CourtNew York Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 23, 2012
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 979 N.E.2d 1135 (People v. Halter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Halter, 979 N.E.2d 1135, 19 N.Y.3d 1046 (N.Y. 2012).

Opinions

OPINION OF THE COURT

Memorandum.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.

Defendant and his ex-wife are the parents of two daughters. After their divorce, the mother and daughters moved out of state but returned to New York several years later. This allowed defendant to visit his daughters (8 and 13 years of age) on weekends, but his relationship with his older daughter was fraught with difficulties. He constantly argued with her about what he considered her unacceptable behavior and threatened to send her to a “brat camp” if she continued to disregard his admonitions. Their contentious relationship lead to an incident in July 2006, when defendant sought police assistance to locate her since she had not returned to her mother’s home the night before. After the police picked her up at the home of a 16-year-old boy, she and defendant had a heated telephone conversation. When the phone call ended, she informed her mother that her father had sexually abused her. The younger daughter later made a similar revelation, leading to defendant’s arrest.

At defendant’s bench trial, both daughters described their incidents of sexual abuse in detail. On cross-examination, the older daughter admitted that she often argued with her father about boys, her behavior and her attire. During defendant’s testimony, he corroborated the friction between himself and his daughter and confirmed that he often discussed sending her to “the Villa,” a special school, if she did not change her ways.

Defendant was convicted as charged of sexual abuse in the first degree, rape in the second degree, criminal sexual act in the second degree and endangering the welfare of a child. The Appellate Division affirmed (81 AD3d 1446 [4th Dept 2011]), and a Judge of this Court granted defendant leave to appeal (17 NY3d 796 [2011]).

On appeal, defendant claims that he was deprived of a fair trial because several of the trial court’s evidentiary rulings prevented him from adequately establishing his older daughter’s motivation to fabricate the charges. In particular, he asserts that the trial judge erred in precluding (1) cross-examination of the older daughter regarding the purportedly sexual nature of her relationship with the 16-year-old boy at whose home she was found; (2) cross-examination about her sexually provocative [1049]*1049postings and photos from her MySpace account; and (3) evidence of her tendency to wear what defendant considered to be inappropriate clothing for her age. Defendant claims that this evidence was essential to explaining the increasing discord between himself and his daughter and that its exclusion did not allow him to present a complete explanation of his defense. We disagree.

First, the court did not err in precluding evidence regarding the purportedly sexual nature of the daughter’s relationship with an older teenage boy. That evidence fell squarely within the ambit of the Rape Shield Law, which generally prohibits “[ejvidence of a victim’s sexual conduct” in a prosecution for a sex offense under Penal Law article 130 (CPL 60.42) because such evidence “rarely elicits testimony relevant to the issues of the victim’s consent on credibility, but serves only to harass the alleged victim and confuse the jurors” (People v Scott, 16 NY3d 589, 594 [2011] [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
979 N.E.2d 1135, 19 N.Y.3d 1046, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-halter-ny-2012.