prior inconsistent statement

On the night of August 30, 1982, eight young boys returning home from a party were confronted by a trio of other boys who demanded money. When the eight boys refused to comply, one member of the trio produced a gun and fired into the larger group, killing one boy and seriously injuring another. When the police arrived, the remaining members of the larger group provided eyewitness accounts of the event and descriptions of the perpetrators. The next evening, two detectives of the Chicago Police Department took 15-year-old Darryl James into custody as a suspect in the shooting. James was found at his mother’s beauty parlor sitting under a hair dryer; when he emerged, his hair was black and curly. After placing James in their car, the detectives questioned him about his prior hair color. He responded that the previous day his hair had been reddish brown, long, and combed straight back. The detectives questioned James again later at the police station. He further stated that he had gone to the beauty parlor to have his hair dyed black and curled to change his appearance. The State subsequently indicted James for murder and attempted murder. Prior to trial, James moved to suppress the statements regarding his hair. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court ruled that the statements would be inadmissible at trial. At trial, five members of the larger group of boys testified for the State, and each made an in-court identification of the defendant. Each testified that the person responsible for the shooting had reddish hair, worn shoulder length in a slicked-back style. James did not testify in his own defense. He called as a witness Jewel Henderson, a friend of his family. Henderson testified that on the day of the shooting she had taken James to register for high school and that, at that time, his hair was black. The State then sought to introduce James’ statements as a means of impeaching the credibility of Henderson’s testimony. One of the interrogating detectives then reported James’ prior admissions that he had reddish hair the night of the shooting and he dyed and curled his hair the next day to change his appearance. James ultimately was convicted of both murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed James’ convictions and ordered a new trial. However, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed and ordered James’ convictions reinstated. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari.

In January 1975, local police in Lake County, Ohio, arrested Herschel Roberts and charged him with forgery of a check in the name of Bernard Isaacs and with possession of stolen credit cards belonging to Isaacs and his wife Amy. A preliminary hearing took place on January 10 in Municipal Court, where the prosecution presented several witnesses including Mr. Isaacs. Roberts's appointed counsel called Anita Isaacs, the daughter of the Isaacs, as the defense's sole witness. Anita testified that she knew Roberts and had allowed him to use her apartment for several days while she was away, but she denied giving him her parents' checks or credit cards. Defense counsel questioned her extensively in an attempt to obtain an admission that she had provided the items without permission, though she maintained her denial, and the prosecutor did not examine her. A county grand jury later indicted Roberts for forgery, receiving stolen property, and possession of heroin, after which new counsel was appointed for him. Between November 1975 and March 1976, the State issued five subpoenas to Anita at her parents' Ohio residence for four different trial dates, with the last three including instructions that she should call before appearing. Anita did not respond to the subpoenas or appear at the March 1976 trial in the Court of Common Pleas. At trial, Roberts testified that Anita had given him her parents' checkbook and credit cards with permission to use them. The State then offered the transcript of Anita's preliminary hearing testimony pursuant to an Ohio statute allowing use of such testimony when a witness cannot be produced. During a voir dire hearing on the transcript's admissibility, Amy Isaacs testified that Anita had left home for Tucson, Arizona, shortly after the preliminary hearing. She described limited contacts, including a welfare application in San Francisco about a year before trial that led to one phone call, and another call seven or eight months before trial in which Anita said she was traveling outside Ohio. Mrs. Isaacs stated she had no way to reach Anita in an emergency and knew of no one who knew her location. The trial court admitted the transcript, and the jury convicted Roberts on all counts. The Ohio Court of Appeals reversed the convictions after reviewing the voir dire evidence, concluding that the prosecution had not made a good-faith effort to secure Anita's attendance at trial. The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the reversal but on different grounds, determining that while Anita was unavailable, the preliminary hearing testimony did not satisfy the requirements for admission under the Confrontation Clause because defense counsel had not actually cross-examined her there. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the constitutional issues raised by the admission of the testimony.

On the evening of April 15, 1989, two white Air Force police officers named Jane Smith and Tony McCormack were walking back to their dormitories at Fort Dix, New Jersey, after seeing a movie. They sat under a glass-enclosed bus shelter to avoid light rain. A black male wearing a wool cap and tan nylon jogging suit entered the shelter, drew a small silver handgun, robbed McCormack of his wallet containing an unsigned $100 money order, and forced Smith to perform fellatio on him while threatening to shoot McCormack. After the assailant fled when a car drove by, the victims contacted military police. Investigator Christine Amos suggested they look at a wanted board containing eight posters with composite sketches and photographs. McCormack immediately identified a photograph of defendant Richard Stevens, and Smith agreed it resembled the attacker though he appeared heavier in the photo. Smith then went to Walson Army Community Hospital where a doctor administered a rape crisis kit and attempted to secure semen samples from her saliva and clothing, producing three glass slides. The FBI laboratory later performed serological testing on one slide containing sufficient semen, which consumed all material on the slide and prevented DNA testing. A consent order had directed the FBI to preserve samples if possible after its own tests so Stevens could conduct DNA testing. The government made remaining materials available to the defense nearly six weeks later, but testing proved inconclusive. Stevens was indicted on charges of aggravated sexual assault and robbery within the special territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Stevens's first trial ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked. At the second trial in March 1990, the district court permitted expert testimony on cross-racial identifications, weapon focus, and stress but excluded testimony on the lack of correlation between confidence and accuracy in identifications. The court also excluded testimony from Tyrone Mitchell, who had been robbed at gunpoint three days later at Fort Dix in a similar manner; Mitchell did not identify Stevens, and the fruits of both crimes ended up near Fort Meade, Maryland. The jury convicted Stevens on both counts, and the district court sentenced him to 168 months of incarceration. Stevens appealed, challenging the destruction of the semen sample, the wanted board identification, the admission of pretrial services testimony, the limits on expert testimony, and the exclusion of the Mitchell evidence. The Third Circuit reviewed the record developed at the Wade hearing, the Brady motion hearing, the Downing hearing on expert testimony, and the trial proceedings.