The Appeals Court has vacated a defendant’s conviction for indecent assault and battery.
According to court documents, the defendant and the alleged victim attended a party together. The alleged victim got drunk, threw up, and passed out in the host’s bedroom.
She claims that when she woke the next morning the defendant was in bed with her and she had been (in the court’s words) “vaginally penetrated.”
She went to the hospital for an examination and ultimately the defendant was criminally charged.
At trial, the judge allowed the jury to view the alleged victim’s medical records despite the defendant’s objection.
Portions of the medical records were redacted but the word “assailant”, which was repeatedly used on the boilerplate forms, was not omitted.
The jury convicted the defendant and he appealed.
The Appeals Court agreed that prejudicial words such as “assailant” should have been redacted from the medical records before they were submitted to the jury.
On appeal, the defendant argues that, despite the redactions that the judge made, the medical records that went to the jury still contained more than twenty references reinforcing the concept that a sexual assault took place. Particularly since the defense was consent, the defendant argues, the failure to make sufficient redactions was prejudicial error. We agree.
Citing Commonwealth v. Dargon, the Appeals Court held that failure to redact words such as “assault” and “assailant” from medical records was an error.
As the courts have recognized, a statement in a medical record enhanced with a cloak of professional and institutional authority, that the very crime which the prosecution is bound to prove has occurred, acquires considerable potency
The full text of the opinion is attached below.