Opinion ID: 1387737
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: inadmissible evidence of unrelated conduct

Text: The prosecutor made a poor choice in not charging by a count for a deliberate, wilful and premeditated killing. A poorer choice was to attempt to bolster up a doubtful torture murder case by attempting to prove an intent to torture the boy by the use of unrelated antecedent conduct from which the intent might be inferred. Counsel for defendant's assessment of the admission of such evidence is: Clearly any small amount of probative value that the testimonies of Dally, Jacobson, and Nelson had to the crime with which Gene Stuart is charged, is far outweighed by the enormous prejudice that such testimony engendered against the defendant. I agree, adding only that such is an understatement. The senseless killing of a three-year-old boy would have in the first placed engendered as much jury antipathy toward the defendant as the prosecutor could have wanted. To try the defendant at the same time for uncharged bad conduct, whether criminal or not, makes it impossible to conclude that the jury might have convicted the defendant without having heard evidence unrelated to the alleged crime of torture murder.