Greenleaf Child Witness Measure Passes Senate

HARRISBURG –The Pennsylvania Senate has overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 55, the proposed constitutional change offered by Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf to provide child witnesses in the commonwealth with the option of electronic testimony.

As a constitutional amendment, the proposal must be passed by two sessions of the General Assembly in order to appear on the ballot for the state’s voters to decide.  The measure was approved in the 2001-2002 legislative session and must achieve approval by the Senate and House again in the current session to become a referendum in an upcoming election.  With prompt passage by the House, the earliest the measure could be placed on the ballot is the election of May 20.

"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 55 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. “Children who have suffered physical and emotional trauma sometimes are not capable of re-living that trauma under the gaaze 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 U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that electronic testimony by a child victim or child material witness is permissible based on a judge's finding that the child would suffer serious emotional distress if forced to confront the accused.  

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, a Greenleaf statute to provide electronic testimony for children.  A divided court at that time 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.

Under Senate Bill 55, 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.