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Woods v. State4/7/1999
to call one expert witness and later requested a continuance to look for another expert witness. Both requests were denied. In addition, Judge Lombardi limited Woods' cross-examination of a state expert witness. Also, Woods objected that, during the state's rebuttal argument, the prosecutor had made comments that shifted the burden of producing evidence to the defense.
The jury returned verdicts of guilty, and Woods appeals. She asserts that Judge Lombardi erred when she denied Woods' request to call the particular expert witness, when she denied the request to call the unnamed expert, and when she restricted Woods' cross-examination of the state's expert. Woods also contends that Judge Lombardi erred when she overruled Woods' objection that the prosecutor's rebuttal comments improperly shifted the burden to produce evidence to Woods.
Woods first contends that it was error for Judge Lombardi to deny Woods' request to call Diane LaRusso, director of the Valley Women's Resource Center, as an expert witness. A Judge's decision excluding an expert witness will be overturned only if it is an abuse of discretion. We will find an abuse of discretion only "when we are left with a definite and firm conviction, after reviewing the whole record, that the trial court erred in its ruling."
On appeal, Woods argues that she wanted LaRusso as an expert to comment on a statement Woods made to DeCoeur while she was being processed for DWI. The DWI processing had been recorded on audiotape, and a portion of it was played to the jury. The jury heard Woods screaming and carrying on in a hysterical fashion about the trooper sexually harassing her, and about her past experience with the police. At one point, she yelled that she had called the police for help when her ex-husband was beating her, and they had not responded. The day after the state played this portion to the jury, Woods requested permission to call LaRusso. Woods wanted to offer LaRusso as an expert on battered women and domestic violence issues and have her testify that it is common for women who have been physically abused by their partners, and who believe that the police have done nothing to help them, to be hostile to the police. The state objected on the grounds that Woods had not given any notice of an expert.
Woods claims that she was not required to give notice of this expert under Alaska Criminal Rule 16(c) because she did not think that LaRusso's knowledge was germane until the state presented its evidence. She also claims that she learned only by chance that Woods' hostility towards the police could be explained by her history of domestic violence coupled with her claim that the police had not responded when she had called upon them. In particular, Woods wanted to have her proposed expert testify to explain one specific sentence from the portion played to the jury. She told the Judge:
"I happened to be talking to Ms. LaRusso last night and she said that that particular sentence struck her as being especially relevant to the way a domestic violence victim feels about the police and for that reason, I'd like to call her to just give that one fact. . . . I could not have anticipated that, Your Honor, I did not know that [the prosecutor] was going to pick that particular piece of the tape [to play]."
Judge Lombardi refused to allow the witness, ruling that:
"Allowing evidence as to battered women's syndrome because of one sentence that you shared with Ms. LaRusso is . . . confusing to the jury as well as attenuated from this par-ticular case. . . . aking this particular sentence out of what she said and creating a battered women's defense out of it [creates the] danger of le
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