Opinion ID: 365441
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relevance of Threats Against Benton

Text: 65 Frederick Ingram also argues that joinder caused specific prejudice through the trial court's exclusion, as prejudicial to other defendants, of evidence of threats of physical harm directed against Benton. The short answer is that prejudice to other defendants was not the only ground for the exclusion. The excluded evidence consisted of testimony by Ingram that in the fall of 1972 Benton expressed fear for his own physical well-being if Ingram refused to make the promised payments to the Chicago officials, and testimony by two other witnesses that Benton told them in October 1974 that someone had threatened him with physical harm. To begin with, both statements by Benton were said to have been made long after February 1972, when Ingram, by his own admission, authorized Benton to make payments to secure the contract. There is no indication in the record that the second, made long after all payments were made was ever communicated to Ingram. The alleged threats were directed at Benton, not Frederick Ingram, who had no dealings in the matter with anyone outside Ingram Corporation. Finally, Ingram's theory throughout the trial was economic, not physical, coercion. 17 The evidence was properly excluded as irrelevant, and it would have been equally irrelevant if Ingram had been tried separately. 66