Opinion ID: 2508191
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Did the Trial Court Err in Admitting K.S.A. 60-455 Evidence of Drennan's Prior Violent Abuse of a Former Girlfriend?

Text: The State filed a pretrial motion to allow the introduction of K.S.A. 60-455 evidence of Drennan's prior attack on Stacy Barnes as relevant to prove intent. Although the trial court did not know what Drennan's defense was going to be, the court noted a possible defense was that you didn't intend to strangle. That the strangling did occur, that it might have been something innocent gone bad. On that basis, the trial court granted the State's motion, finding that the incident with Barnes does seem to directly impact on intent and premeditation. The trial court gave the appropriate limiting instruction, telling the jury it could consider evidence that Drennan had committed prior crimes only for the purpose of proving intent. To admit other crimes evidence under K.S.A. 60-455, three requirements must be met. First, the evidence must be relevant to prove one of the facts listed in the statute; in this case, intent. Second, that fact must be a disputed, material fact. Third, the probative value of the evidence must outweigh its potential prejudicial effect. If these requirements are met, the scope of appellate review is limited to whether the trial court abused its discretion. [Citation omitted.] State v. Boorigie, 273 Kan. 18, 34, 41 P.3d 764 (2002). When admitting other crimes evidence to prove intent, the crucial distinction is not whether the crime is a specific or general intent crime, but whether the defendant has claimed his or her acts were innocent. The relevancy of a prior conviction to the offense charged is linked to the similarity of the two offenses. State v. Synoracki, 253 Kan. 59, 71-72, 853 P.2d 24 (1993). State v. Gibson, 30 Kan. App. 2d 937, 944, 52 P.3d 339, rev. denied 274 Kan. 1115 (2002). Drennan argues that Stacy Barnes' testimony should not have been admitted because Drennan's criminal intent was not in question, evidence of his attack on Barnes had no probative value, and the extreme prejudice of Barnes' testimony outweighed any possible probative value. Drennan admitted responsibility for his actions which resulted in Shelbree's death, but claimed he could not remember those actions and was too intoxicated to have formed any intent to kill Shelbree. Thus, Drennan contends he never claimed his actions were innocent and the only contested issue was whether he was too intoxicated to form the intent to kill Shelbree. Drennan also points out that the trial court, in denying his request for lesser included offense instructions on reckless second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, determined that his actions could only have been intentional and not reckless; therefore, intent could not have been at issue. Drennan misapprehends the meaning of the term innocent in this context. Drennan's actions were susceptible to several interpretations: He acted with premeditated intent to kill, with unpremeditated intent to kill, or with neither premeditation nor intent to kill because of his level of intoxication. Under the last interpretation, Drennan's actions would have been considered innocent in that the jury would have acquitted. In other words, by arguing he was incapable of forming the requisite intent due to his intoxication, Drennan placed his intent at issue. Furthermore, even where there is no question that a murder was committed intentionally, the element of premeditation may still be substantially at issue. For example, in State v. Henson, 221 Kan. 635, 562 P.2d 51 (1977), the victim was murdered in a particularly brutal manner: the killer had slashed her throat back to the spinal cord and stabbed her repeatedly in and around the heart. Based upon this evidence, the court found there was no question of the perpetrator's intent to kill. Nonetheless, the court found that evidence of a previous knifing incident against a different victim was relevant to show both identity and prior intent as related to premeditation. 221 Kan. at 645. Because of the similarity between the current and prior offense, the court found the evidence was admissible. 221 Kan. at 644-45. In the context of relevancy to prove intent, similarity is also important; however, [p]roving intent does not require as much detailed similarity as proving identity. State v. Synoracki, 253 Kan. 59, 73, 853 P.2d 24 (1993). In this case, there were striking similarities between the attack on Stacy Barnes and the murder of Shelbree Wilson. Drennan had been cohabiting with each of the women, each attack was precipitated by an argument, and each attack involved manual strangulation. Drennan's statements to Barnes that she should get ready to die and prepare to take her last breath showed that Drennan understood that squeezing the woman's neck could lead to her death. Thus, the evidence of the attack on Barnes was relevant to show Drennan's intent and premeditation in the murder of Shelbree Wilson. Other cases have upheld the admission of prior crimes evidence under similar circumstances. See, e.g., State v. Boorigie, 273 Kan. at 34-36 (evidence that defendant had committed violence against former wives was admissible to prove identity, intent, plan, and absence of mistake where murder victim had been married to defendant and died of manual strangulation and two former wives testified that when defendant became angry he would grab them around the neck and throw them); State v. Lessley, 271 Kan. 780, 793-94, 26 P.3d 620 (2001) (no abuse of discretion in admission of testimony of defendant's former wife that defendant was verbally abusive to her when angry, and on two occasions was physically abusive to her, as evidence relevant to issues of motive and intent during prosecution in which defendant was charged with murdering his former girlfriend after she attempted to end their relationship). The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of Drennan's prior attack on Stacy Barnes.