Habeas Corpus — right to present evidence

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Habeas Corpus — right to present evidence

In a homicide trial, where the trial court excluded testimony of a six-year-old that the child victim wrapped the cord that killed him around his own neck, as incompetent, the defendant’s right to present evidence was denied.

“Even if some other aspects of Diante’s testimony might reasonably have caused the finder-of-fact to question the reliability of his account, sorting out truthful from untruthful testimony is the essence of the jury’s function in our criminal justice system. See Scheffer, 523 U.S. at 313 (‘A fundamental premise of our criminal trial system is that the jury is the lie detector. Determining the weight and credibility of witness testimony, therefore, has long been held to be the “part of every case [that] belongs to the jury, who are presumed to be fitted for it by their natural intelligence and their practical knowledge of men and the ways of men.”’) (internal citation and some quotation marks omitted), quoting Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Ward, 140 U.S. 76, 88 (1891). Had Diante testified, the jury would have heard his account that he saw Jaquari wrap the cord around his own neck — the most valuable piece of evidence for Harris’s defense. His testimony would also have been subjected to cross-examination, and the able prosecutors in this case no doubt would have tried to impeach him on some of the same lines of questioning they raised at the competency hearing. That is how the adversary process is designed to work.”

Reversed.

12-1088 Harris v. Thompson

Appeal from the United States District court for the Northern District of Illinois, Zagel, J., Hamilton, J.