HOUSE APPROVES GREENLEAF CHILD WITNESS MEASURE
HARRISBURG –The Pennsylvania House has overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 211, the proposed constitutional amendments offered by Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf to provide child victims in the commonwealth with the option of electronic testimony.
Greenleaf is the sponsor of several previous measures to give Pennsylvania children the same access to justice as children in the majority of states already have with regard to testifying as victims or material witnesses in criminal cases.
"In 1995, the voters of Pennsylvania approved changing the state constitution to allow the option of electronic testimony for children who are too traumatized to testify in a courtroom in the direct presence of the accused," Greenleaf noted. "However, the State Supreme Court, in a 1999 decision, invalidated that voter referendum on technical grounds. Senate Bill 211 is the latest effort to facilitate the testimony of children who would suffer emotionally or find themselves unable to testify under the gaze of the accused in court. Every year that goes by without this accommodation for child witnesses, we learn of new young victims who could have been helped by using electronic testimony," Greenleaf said.
One such case involved kindergarten children in Red Lion, York County, who were attacked in their classroom by a machete-wielding assailant in February of last year. According to news accounts, some children wounded in that attack feared facing the accused, a Tennessee man upset over domestic problems, in court proceedings. The problem was averted when the man pleaded guilty to the attack.
"Children who have suffered physical and emotional trauma sometimes are not capable of re-living that trauma under the gaze of the accused perpetrator. And, because we do not have an electronic testimony option for child victims in Pennsylvania, perpetrators sometimes go free," Greenleaf said.
The State Supreme Court action striking down the voter-approved constitutional amendment in 1999 represented the second time that the state high court rejected a law enacted by the General Assembly on child witness testimony. In a prior ruling, the state high court struck down Act 14 of 1986, an earlier Greenleaf proposal to provide electronic testimony for children. A divided court declared that law unconstitutional, claiming that the measure required amending the constitution. As a result, the senator reintroduced the measure as a proposed constitutional amendment. The constitutional amendment was passed by the General Assembly in two consecutive sessions and the state’s voters approved it by a margin of 1,176,652 to 400,727. Defense lawyers challenged the law on the grounds that the ballot question should have been divided in two separate questions, and the state high court agreed.
The state court's rulings stand in contrast to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that allow for electronic television testimony by a child victim or child material witness based on a judge's finding that the child would suffer serious emotional distress if forced to confront the accused.
As proposed constitutional amendments, the latest Greenleaf effort must pass the General Assembly in two consecutive sessions and receive voter approval in a ballot referendum in order to become law. The earliest that the proposed constitutional amendment could appear on the ballot is in a 2003 election. In order for that to happen, the General Assembly must pass the legislation again early enough in the 2003-2004 legislative session to meet newspaper advertising requirements.
The General Assembly had the opportunity last session to act on the Greenleaf proposal, but, after passing the Senate, the measure was bottled up in the House of Representatives.
Under Senate Bill 211, the provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution giving a criminal defendant the right to meet the witnesses against him "face to face" would be removed. The language would be replaced with the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." Also, the General Assembly would be authorized to provide by statute for the manner of testimony of child victims and witnesses in criminal cases, including use of videotaped depositions and closed-circuit television.
The proposal provides that any ballot question on the issue will be framed in two separate questions, one on the "face to face" language in the state constitution and the other on the manner of testimony for child witnesses.
Thirty-five states have enacted legislation authorizing the use of videotaped testimony and 34 states have statutes authorizing closed circuit television testimony, according to the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.
