Case Name: STATE of Vermont v. Robert B. CONNOR
Court: Vermont Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Vermont
Decision Date: 2011-02-22
Citations: 189 Vt. 587
Docket Number: No. 09-269
Parties: STATE of Vermont v. Robert B. CONNOR
Judges: 
Reporter: Vermont Reports
Volume: 189
Pages: 587–593

Head Matter:
2011 VT 23
STATE of Vermont v. Robert B. CONNOR
[19 A.3d 146]
No. 09-269
February 22, 2011.

Opinion:
¶ 1. Defendant appeals from his convictions of domestic assault and unlawful restraint following a jury trial. We affirm.
¶ 2. Before the charges were brought in this case, defendant and the complainant had been involved in an intimate relationship for approximately one year, during which time defendant moved into the complainant's residence. The incident that led to the charges occurred in late March 2008, but the complainant did not report the incident to police until a few days later. Before trial, the prosecution filed a notice of its intention to introduce evidence of prior incidents of abuse. Following a pretrial hearing, the district court permitted the State to present testimony concerning two instances of prior physical abuse. At trial, the State presented several witnesses, including: (1) a friend of defendant's, who stated that defendant had acknowledged striking the complainant on a prior occasion in August 2007; (2) a nurse practitioner, who stated that she observed the complainant in August 2007 with a red eye and bruises allegedly caused by defendant; and (3) a police officer, who mentioned that police had been to the complainant's residence on a prior occasion, at which time a couple living with the complainant and defendant stated that they were tired of the abuse. The complainant then testified at length about defendant's physical abuse culminating in the incident that led to the charges. Defendant did not testify and proceeded pro se, with an attorney present as a backup. He cross-examined witnesses and presented opening and closing statements to the jury. The State also presented an expert witness's testimony concerning Battered Women's Syndrome. Among other things, the State's expert told the jury that an ongoing abusive relationship can result in shame, denial, and a reluctance to report abuse. '
¶ 3. On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred by permitting the State to introduce evidence from multiple witnesses of his uncharged prior bad acts. He contends that a disproportionate part of the State's case was directed at prior bad acts rather than the charged incident and that the trial court failed to perform its gate-keeping function and employ the requisite balancing test in Vermont Rule of Evidence 403 to assure that the prior-bad-act evidence was not unduly prejudicial. In defendant's view, the trial court abused its discretion by assuming that evidence of prior bad acts is automatically admissible in domestic assault cases and that a limiting instruction automatically cures any potential prejudice resulting from the admission of such evidence. While emphasizing that prior-bad-act evidence is not automatically admissible in domestic assault cases, we find no basis to overturn the instant convictions for the reasons expressed below.
¶ 4. Evidence of prior bad acts is not admissible to prove character in order to show that a person acted in conformity therewith, but it may be "admissible for other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident." V.R.E. 404(b). The rule's listing of "other purposes" is not exclusive, see State v. Forbes, 161 Vt. 327, 332, 640 A.2d 13, 16 (1993), and this Court has acknowledged that evidence of prior bad acts may be relevant to provide con text with respect to a charged offense that otherwise might not make sense when viewed in isolation. See State v. Sanders, 168 Vt. 60, 62, 716 A.2d 11, 13 (1998) (explaining that "[a]llegations of a single act of domestic violence, taken out of its situational context, are likely to seem 'incongruous and incredible' "). Such historical context has been held relevant to explain a complainant's later recantation as a product of fear "or even out of misguided affection." Id. at 63, 716 A.2d at 13; cf. Forbes, 161 Vt. at 333, 640 A.2d at 16 (noting that evidence of prior history of abuse has been held admissible to establish an ongoing abusive relationship so as "to allow the victim to tell enough of the story to preserve its integrity as a credible one"). Our review of the trial court's admission of prior-bad-act evidence under Rule 404(b) requires us to analyze first whether the evidence is relevant and material to the cause of action and second whether the evidence is more probative than unfairly prejudicial. State v. Laprade, 2008 VT 83, ¶ 14, 184 Vt. 251, 958 A.2d 1179. We will reverse the trial court's decision to admit such evidence only if we find that the court withheld or abused its discretion to the extent that a substantial right of the defendant was affected. State v. Hendricks, 173 Vt. 132, 138, 787 A.2d 1270, 1275 (2001).
¶ 5. In this case, at the pretrial hearing on the State's motion to allow admission of prior bad acts, defendant objected on the basis that the complainant was not a recanting witness and that he was not claiming self-defense. He also argued that evidence of prior assaults would be unduly prejudicial. In response, among other things, the prosecutor noted that this was a situation where the complainant delayed in contacting police, which could cause the jury to question her credibility. The trial court concluded that admission of the evidence was appropriate with a limiting instruction.
¶ 6. At trial, the complainant testified at length about her on-again-off-again relationship with defendant, whom she described as controlling. She stated that she put up with the abuse from defendant — whom she also referred to as "God" at one point during her testimony — because "he has a physical presence that just melts me." She explained how her self-denial of the abusive relationship and defendant's controlling behavior had led her to decline to report the domestic abuse during an emergency room visit resulting from an earlier assault and later to withdraw a restraining order that she had previously filed. She was unable to remember details of what had led to the final assault upon which the charges were based. Nor could she recall her actions following the assault. She stated that she did not initially report the most recent assault for fear of defendant's reaction but realized a few days after it occurred that she could no longer tolerate the situation and had to report the abuse.
¶7. Defendant's cross-examination of the witnesses and his closing argument to the jury were aimed at undermining the complainant's credibility. He cross-examined both the complainant and the nurse practitioner about medications that the complainant had been taking to address her mental-health issues. He asked the nurse practitioner if she was aware that one of the side effects of those drugs was easy bruising, thereby implying that any bruises she observed may have been caused by the medication rather than him. He also asked the nurse practitioner questions revealing that the complainant was taking medications for depression. Further, defendant questioned the complainant not only about her medications but also about her inability to recall specific details of the charged assault, including how long it lasted and when it occurred.
¶ 8. Defendant continued this theme in his closing argument to the jury, emphasising the lack of details concerning the assault. He told the jurors that, with respect to the only incident for which he was being charged, the complainant was accusing him of holding her down for "an undetermined amount of time" during an undetermined time of the day. He emphasized that the complainant was unable to tell them not only when or how long the incident took place but also what she did after the assault. He noted the contradictions and lack of clarity in the complainant's testimony and reminded the jury that there was no physical evidence of injury with respect to the charged incident — "no pictures, no doctor's reports. Nothing." Following closing arguments, the trial court gave the jurors a limiting instruction cautioning them that they could consider prior-bad-act evidence to understand the nature of the parties' relationship but not to conclude that defendant is a bad person or was more likely to have committed the charged assault.
¶ 9. Upon review of the record, we find no error in the trial court's admission of prior-bad-act evidence. The testimony concerning the history of defendant's abusive conduct toward the complainant, as well as her tolerance and delayed reporting of that abuse, was, if believed, consistent with the expert testimony about Battered Women's Syndrome. The prior-bad-act evidence allowed the jury to reconcile the claimed assault with the complainant's reluctance to end the abusive relationship. Its relevance to the complainant's credibility was no less than the same sort of history deemed admissible to counter a recantation in Sanders. See 168 Vt. at 62, 716 A.2d at 12. A history of battering is no less relevant to establish a more credible context for domestic assault in this case than was a pattern of incest relevant to present a more credible context for the charge of sexual assault by a father against his daughter in Forbes. See 161 Vt. at 329, 640 A.2d at 14. As in another domestic assault case recently decided by this Court, "[djefendant's trial strategy . . . was aimed precisely at establishing an incongruity between complainant's allegations and her actions before and after the assault." State v. Williams, 2010 VT 77, ¶ 14, 188 Vt. 405, 9 A.3d 315. Defendant's questioning of the complainant's failure to recall details of the charged assault and of her delay in reporting the assault are "precisely the sort of argument[s] that 'context' evidence is designed to address — to show the nature of the parties' relationship and explain what might otherwise appear to be incongruous behavior to a jury, such as remaining with an abusive partner and delaying a report of abuse." Id. ¶ 15.
¶ 10. In short, the record in this case reveals the type of circumstances that our holding in Sanders was meant to address. As we stated in Sanders, "[w]ithout knowing the history of the relationship between the defendant and the victim, jurors may not believe the victim was actually abused, since domestic violence is learned, controlling behavior aimed at gaining another's compliance through multiple incidents." 168 Vt. at 62, 716 A.2d at 14 (quotation omitted). As was the case in Laprade, here the jury might well have found the complainant's reluctance to contact the police difficult to reconcile with her claims of abuse. 2008 VT 83, ¶ 22. As in Laprade, the jury in this case "would have been unable to make an adequate determination of [the complainant's] credibility without healing further testimony about the nature of her relationship with defendant." Id.
¶ 11. We do not agree with defendant's claim that evidence concerning prior bad acts dominated the trial. There was brief testimony from defendant's best friend, the nurse practitioner, and a police officer regarding prior assaults. The only detailed testimony .concerning prior assaults came from the complainant herself, who described the incidents in some detail to provide the jury with a better understanding of the nature of her relationship with defendant up until the time of the charged incident. To be sure, presenting witnesses other than the complainant to testify about prior bad acts, particularly when those witnesses testify only about prior bad acts, raises concerns as to whether defendant would be unduly prejudiced by the trial losing its focus on the charged acts. Our review of the record, however, does not compel us to reverse the judgment based on such considerations. For the most part, the trial focused on the charged incident, and the court unequivocally instructed the jury to base its decision on whether defendant was guilty of committing the charged act, independent of any previous conduct on his part.
¶ 12. Defendant also complains that the trial court failed to specifically balance under Rule 403 the probative value of the prior-bad-act evidence against its prejudicial impact. We find this argument unavailing. The record reveals that the trial court did conduct a Rule 403 analysis, albeit briefly. The court assured defendant, who was arguing pro se, that he expressed the correct Rule 403 objection, but that "the weight is toward putting this in." Although it would have been helpful for the court to express in some detail its rationale for determining that the probative value of the evidence outweighed its prejudicial impact, there was no error in the court's ruling. The trial court "do[es] not have to specify the exact weight [it] assign[s] to each factor during a Rule 403 analysis." State v. Longley, 2007 VT 101, ¶ 18, 182 Vt. 452, 939 A.2d 1028. As in Williams, where we found no merit to the defendant's Rule 403 claim of error, "the evidence was highly probative under the circumstances to explain the dynamic of the parties' relationship and complainant's conduct both before and after the assault." 2010 VT 77, ¶ 16. "Nor did the evidence 'raise the specter of unfair prejudice that could have resulted from testimony regarding other victims of abuse.' " Id. (quoting Laprade, 2008 VT 83, ¶ 25). Indeed, the admission of a history of abuse for context in this case was no more prejudicial than in Sanders and Hendricks, where the jury considered other incidents of alleged abuse against the same complainant by the same defendant. In this case, apart from making a generalized claim of undue prejudice from adverse evidence, defendant fails to demonstrate how the contested prior-bad-act evidence unduly exceeded the prejudice acknowledged but not excluded in Sanders and Hendricks.
¶ 13. Finally, although we conclude that the record in this case supports the trial court's decision to allow the challenged prior-bad-act evidence, we repeat our recent admonition in Williams that evidence of prior bad acts is not automatically admissible in domestic-assault cases. 2010 VT 77, ¶ 10. As we stated in Williams, the trial court should either defer ruling on a prior-bad-act motion until trial or, at minimum, establish a clear basis for deciding the motion in advance. Id. ¶ 11. That way, trial courts can make more reasoned and clearly defined decisions based on the evidence adduced at trial and the actual defense presented to the jury.
Affirmed.
The record does not support the interpretation of the facts upon which the concurrence is based. The State's information alleges that the charged assault occurred on "or about" March 31, 2008, rather than a date certain. And the contemporaneous March 31, 2008 affidavit of the investigating officer who testified at trial indicated that the complainant had called him that day and advised him that defendant had choked her "sometime last week." More specifically, the affiant reported complainant as telling him: "The last incident he knelt on me and held me down and choked me. This was over a week ago." According to the affiant, complainant told him that "after this weekend I knew I had to take action to protect myself." Consistent with the affidavit, the complainant testified at trial that she waited a week before calling the police because she was afraid of what defendant might do to her. Moreover, the investigating officer testified at trial that he waited a day to go to the complainant's house to take a statement from her because she was still hesitant to report the abuse before finally calling back and asking him to come to her house. In short, the complainant's fear of defendant stemming from his past abuse caused her to delay reporting the charged incident for a week or more. This is admissible context evidence consistent with our prior holdings.