trial court erred in showing videotaped statement to jury without first viewing it and identifying those portions admissible as a prior consistent statement
How later courts described this case
- trial court erred in showing videotaped statement to jury without first viewing it and identifying those portions admissible as a prior consistent statement
- iquoting Robinson v. State, 11 P.3d 361, 367 (Wyo.2000), cert, denied, 532 U.S. 980, 121 S.Ct. 1620,149 L.Ed.2d 483 (2001)
- “[M]aterial information presented for the first time to support a prior ‘consistent statement’ has no antecedent with which to be consistent or inconsistent and is, therefore, inadmissible.”
- ineffectiveness cannot be premised on counsel's failure to file suppression motion where no underlying basis existed for motion
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Overruled on other grounds by Jones v. State, 439 P.3d 753 (2019)
2002 WY 45, ¶ 39 , 43 P.3d 80, 96 (Wyo. 2002), overruled on other grounds by Jones v. State, 2019 WY 45 , 439 P.3d 753
The opinion
LEHMAN, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
[187] I respectfully dissent. I agree with the majority that the introduction of the Hanson videotape into evidence was error. I do not agree, however, that a "massive amount of evidence" exists to support the majority's conclusion that the error was harmless.
[188] The facts set forth in the majority opinion discuss the contrasting stories of the appellant and the only witness, Hanson. The "massive amount of evidence" referred to by the majority is simply the physical evidence at the scene of the erime. No one other than Hanson and the appellant testified as having actually observed the events that transpired on the evening in question. Therefore, it was the videotape, which the judge instructed the jury was for the "limited purposes of evaluating the eredibility of the declarant, Mr. Hanson," that provided the jury a court-approved vehicle to examine for a second time Hanson's versions of the events. This bolstering of Hanson's credibility certainly cannot be dismissed as harmless error in a trial that amounted to a "swearing match" between Hanson and the appellant.