Opinion ID: 2208977
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Indirect References to Prior Misconduct

Text: Appellant raises two separate allegations of prejudicial suggestions of prior misconduct. He challenges the failure to give a curative instruction following two unsolicited remarks by the nurse witness (who presented the gonorrhea test results) that she worked at a prison. He also challenges the adequacy of a curative instruction given after the police officer's unsolicited, passing remark that a photo array shown to a witness after the crime was comprised of photographs of persons arrested previously. We find no merit in the contentions individually or taken together. The jury was aware that appellant had been arrested, and so the fact that a prison nurse had mentioned that appellant had been incarcerated when a post -arrest blood test was performed merely disclosed that he had not immediately been released on bail. That fact did not imply prior or unrelated criminal conduct. As the remark was relatively innocuous, we see no reason why the trial court should have drawn undue attention to it. The disclosure that photographs used in an array were mugshots was improper. Nonetheless, we have no reason to doubt the efficacy of the simple curative instruction given by the trial court. See Commonwealth v. Gibson, supra, 567 A.2d at 737.