State v. Burns

829 S.E.2d 367
Supreme Court of Georgia·Decided June 10, 2019·No. S18G1354·Published·Cited by 35 cases

Opinion

Benham, Justice.

*370In Smith v. State , 259 Ga. 135 (1), 377 S.E.2d 158 (1989), this Court held that, once certain procedural requirements are satisfied, a defendant in a sexual-offense prosecution may adduce evidence at trial that the complaining witness has made prior false accusations of sexual misconduct and, further, that such evidence is admissible both to attack the credibility of the victim and as substantive evidence tending to prove that the conduct underlying the charges did not occur. In its decision below, the Court of Appeals followed Smith to reverse the trial court, which had excluded such evidence from being presented during trial under OCGA § 24-4-403. See Burns v. State , 345 Ga. App. 822, 813 S.E.2d 425 (2018). We subsequently granted certiorari review to reconsider Smith , and, though we conclude that it was wrongly decided, we affirm the ultimate judgment of the Court of Appeals reversing the trial court.

Appellee James Phillip Burns was charged with aggravated sexual battery, aggravated sodomy, and incest. The charges followed the discovery of a social-media message written by Burns' step-daughter, K.R., detailing an alleged July 2015 sexual encounter with Burns. The message also included the following statement: "And my brother's best friend tried to rape me." K.R. later acknowledged that the attempted-rape statement was "made up," and the State moved in limine to prevent Burns from mentioning it at trial. The trial court granted the State's motion, concluding "that the probative value of the statement in question is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and confusion of the issues and is inadmissible under OCGA § 24-4-403." The trial court certified the issue for immediate review, and the Court of Appeals granted Burns's application for interlocutory appeal.

The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court, holding, in relevant part, that the trial court had misapplied the exclusionary provision in OCGA § 24-4-403 but that, also, "under the principles recognized in Smith , this exclusionary rule must yield to greater constitutional concerns," namely, a "defendant's right of confrontation and right to present a full defense." (Punctuation and citations omitted.) Burns , 345 Ga. App. at 825, 813 S.E.2d 425. The Court of Appeals also indicated that these "constitutional concerns" resulted in the evidence being admissible under OCGA § 24-6-608 (b). We subsequently granted the State's petition for certiorari, asking the parties to address the following questions:

1. This Court held in [ Smith ] that evidence of prior false allegations by a victim of sexual misconduct is admissible in a criminal case regarding alleged sexual misconduct. Was our decision one of constitutional law or of evidence law?
2. If our holding in Smith was one of constitutional law, was it rightly decided? If it was instead an evidentiary holding, does it remain good law under the new Evidence Code?
3. Given the answers to the first two questions, in a criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct, does OCGA § 24-4-403 apply to evidence of prior false accusations of sexual misconduct made by the victim or a person close to the victim?

We address each legal question in turn, applying a de novo standard of review. See Fulton County Bd. of Educ. v. Thomas , 299 Ga. 59, 61, 786 S.E.2d 628 (2016).

1. As relevant here, our decision in Smith was two-fold. We first held that, as a threshold matter, Georgia's Rape Shield statute, as it then existed, "does not prohibit testimony of previous false allegations by a victim" because such "evidence does not involve the victim's past sexual conduct but rather the victim's propensity to make false statements regarding sexual misconduct." Smith , 259 Ga. at 137, 377 S.E.2d 158. We then held, in response to the State's argument that other parts of our then-existing Evidence Code prohibited the admission of false-allegation evidence, that "evidentiary rule[s] preventing evidence of specific acts of untruthfulness must yield to a defendant's right of confrontation and right to present a full defense." Id. In conclusion, we announced that evidence of a prior false allegation was admissible during trial following " 'a threshold determination [made by the trial court outside the presence *371of the jury] that a reasonable probability of falsity exists.' " Id. (quoting Clinebell v. Commonwealth , 235 Va. 319, 368 S.E.2d 263, 266 (1988) ).

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State v. Burns, 829 S.E.2d 367 (Ga. 2019).

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