State v. Staley

995 P.2d 1217, 165 Or. App. 395, 2000 Ore. App. LEXIS 196
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedFebruary 9, 2000
DocketC9302-31280; CA A100322
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 995 P.2d 1217 (State v. Staley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Staley, 995 P.2d 1217, 165 Or. App. 395, 2000 Ore. App. LEXIS 196 (Or. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinions

[397]*397ARMSTRONG, J.

Defendant appeals his convictions for six counts of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree, asserting that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of out-of-court statements by one of the alleged victims and of stories that defendant wrote and allegedly gave to the victims. We affirm.

Defendant was the drama teacher and girls’ basketball coach at Marshall High School in Portland. In spring 1992, several female students complained about his actions, asserting that they constituted sexual harassment. The complaints led . to an investigation that culminated in February 1993, when defendant was indicted on 13 counts of sexual abuse. After a delay that was, at least in part, the result of a state’s appeal on evidentiary issues, State v. Staley, 142 Or App 583, 923 P2d 650 (1996), rev den 324 Or 560 (1997), the case finally went to trial in August 1997. The jury convicted defendant of six counts involving four victims and acquitted him of the remaining seven counts, three of which involved one of the same four victims and four of which involved a fifth victim. All of the convictions involved charges that defendant had touched the victims on the buttocks; he was acquitted of the counts that charged touching in other places.

Defendant’s first two assignments of error relate to the testimony of victim four1 who was the victim in three counts, each of which resulted in a conviction. Although victim four testified at trial, she asserted that she could not remember anything that had happened, barely conceded that she might have had defendant as a teacher, and stated that she had moved on with her life and resented the state’s requiring her to appear and testify. Victim four agreed that she had had an interview with Sergeant Leedom of the Portland School Police and that she had testified before the grand jury that indicted defendant. The state questioned her extensively about the interview and the grand jury testimony, but she was unable to remember any of the specific statements that the state described. The court permitted the state to treat her as a hostile witness, but it did not find — nor did the state ask it to find — that her loss of memory was feigned.

[398]*398After victim four testified, the state called both Leedom and the Assistant District Attorney who had handled the grand jury proceedings. Leedom read his report of his December 17,1992, interview with victim four. He testified that he wrote the report on January 21,1993, and thereafter destroyed his notes of the interview. His testimony would permit the court to find that victim four had reviewed and approved Leedom’s notes, but there is no evidence that she either saw or approved his report. The Assistant District Attorney, relying on her contemporaneous notes, described victim four’s sworn testimony to the grand jury. There is no evidence that victim four saw or approved those notes. Defendant objected to the testimony of both witnesses.

According to Leedom’s report, victim four told him that she had taken drama classes for the previous three years and that defendant had made her uncomfortable, either by what he said or by touching her, on numerous occasions. The examples that she gave included defendant telling her about his sexual experience with another student, commenting on how she looked in her tight clothing, patting her on the buttocks, various other instances of unnecessaiy physical contact, and comments about her probable sexual experience. She said that she told him to stop the comments but that he treated it as a joke. The Assistant District Attorney testified that victim four told the grand jury that defendant put his arm around her and gave her hugs that made her uncomfortable because she felt that they had sexual content, that another time he touched her thigh, that he told her during a rehearsal that she really didn’t need to practice for her role as a sexually experienced older woman, and that on three separate occasions he put his hands on her buttocks. The testimony from Leedom and the Assistant District Attorney was the only evidence that would support the jury’s verdict on the counts concerning victim four.

Defendant objected to this evidence on the ground that it was hearsay that did not come within any exception to the hearsay rule. On appeal, he also asserts that it was not proper impeachment, because any statement that victim four had previously made could not logically impeach her testimony that she no longer remembered what had occurred. Defendant does not assign error to any refusal to give an [399]*399instruction limiting the use of the evidence to impeachment, nor does he assert that the evidence was inadmissible because the state called victim four solely to introduce otherwise inadmissible evidence in the guise of impeachment. Cf. State v. Warren, 88 Or App 462, 466-67, 745 P2d 822 (1987), rev den 305 Or 45 (1988) (trial court properly admitted witness’ confession for impeachment when state did not know that witness would testify inconsistently and witness’ testimony was substantively damaging to state); see also Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Oregon Evidence, 331-32 (3d ed 1996).2

We first consider the admissibility of Leedom’s report of his interview with victim four. The state argues that the report was admissible both as impeachment by a prior inconsistent statement and under OEC 803(5), which states the hearsay exception for prior recollection recorded. We begin with the latter argument. The rule provides that a hearsay statement is admissible if it is

“[a] memorandum or record concerning a matter about which a witness once had knowledge but now has insufficient recollection to enable the witness to testify fully and accurately, shown to have been made or adopted by the witness when the matter was fresh in the memory of the witness and to reflect that knowledge correctly.”

The only criterion of the rule that is seriously in issue is whether victim four adopted the contents of Leedom’s report while her memory was fresh. Defendant argues that, according to Leedom, victim four reviewed and approved his notes, not his report, which he did not even write until a month after the interview.3 We agree with defendant. Under the rule, a witness who did not record the prior recollection must have adopted the record of it in order for the record to be admissible. All that the court could find is that victim four adopted Leedom’s notes. Although Leedom testified that his subsequent report reflected those notes, victim four did not review [400]*400the report or adopt it. The report is not admissible under OEC 803(5).

The state also argues that Leedom’s report was admissible as impeachment by prior inconsistent statement. The state followed the procedural steps for such impeachment, see OEC 613, and defendant did not request a limiting instruction. The controlling issue on appeal is whether it was appropriate to impeach victim four’s asserted lack of memory by showing the substantive statements that she allegedly made when her memory was fresh.4 As a matter of logic, that is not appropriate impeachment by inconsistent statement. The fact that a witness once stated that something was true is not logically inconsistent with a subsequent loss of memory. The only thing that is inconsistent with a claimed loss of memory is evidence that suggests that the witness in fact remembers.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
995 P.2d 1217, 165 Or. App. 395, 2000 Ore. App. LEXIS 196, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-staley-orctapp-2000.