Opinion ID: 1060587
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: admission of prior shootings

Text: As both parties concede in their arguments before this Court, the appellant's involvement in a prior shooting is an act reflecting on the appellant's character, and its admissibility is therefore governed by Tennessee Rule of Evidence 404(b). Rule 404(b) reads as follows: Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts.Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity with the character trait. It may, however, be admissible for other purposes. The conditions which must be satisfied before allowing such evidence are: (1) The court upon request must hold a hearing outside the jury's presence; (2) The court must determine that a material issue exists other than conduct conforming with a character trait and must upon request state on the record the material issue, the ruling, and the reasons for admitting the evidence; and (3) The court must exclude the evidence if the probative value is outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. As the language of the Rule indicates, evidence of other acts is admissible so long as that evidence is (1) offered to establish something other than action in conformity with a particular character trait, (2) relevant to a material issue at trial, and (3) such that its probative value is not outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Unlike Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) which generally bars evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts, the corresponding Rule in Tennessee does not specifically enumerate the purposes for which such evidence may be offered. [5] The issues to which evidence of other acts may be relevant were not listed by the Advisory Commission so that lawyers and judges would use care in identifying the issues to be addressed by the Rule 404(b) evidence. Neil P. Cohen, et al., Tennessee Law of Evidence § 404.6, at 169 n. 457 (3d ed.1995). Therefore, in every case in which evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is offered, the trial judge should carefully scrutinize the relevance of the evidence and the reasons for which it is being offered. In this case, evidence of the appellant's prior shooting of the Walton brothers was offered by the State to paint a picture of the events leading up to and surrounding the murder of Bobby Bush. Although this reason is not one of the reasons frequently given for proffering evidence of other acts, [6] evidence offered to show contextual background need not be excluded simply for the reason that it involves evidence of prior acts. If the contextual evidence is relevant to an issue other than criminal propensity and its probative value is not outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, then that evidence may be properly admissible. Rule of Evidence 401 provides the general standard by which to determine whether proffered evidence is relevant. Rule 401 states that evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. See also State v. Banks, 564 S.W.2d 947, 949 (Tenn.1978) (approving of same standard prior to the adoption of the Tennessee Rules of Evidence). Although this standard provides a relatively lenient threshold for admitting evidence, see Tenn. R. Evid. 401 Advisory Commission Comments, general background evidence used to relate the full story of the offense is rarely probative of an actual material issue at trial. Consequently, background evidence used to show the context of events may not always pass even this low threshold of admission when strictly subjected to the requirements of Rule 401. Nevertheless, as the Rules of Evidence recognize, a strict application of the Rules may work unnecessary hardship in some cases, and the Rules should be flexibly construed to achieve a just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of the proceedings. See Tenn. R. Evid. 102; see also Cohen, et al., supra, § 102.1 at 4. A general policy that bars background evidence merely because it does not directly bear upon a material issue ignores the fact that such evidence is often crucial to understanding the other material evidence at trial, and the absence of background evidence could have detrimental effects on the jury's comprehension of the offense in question. Events do not occur in a vacuum, and in many cases, knowledge of the events surrounding the commission of the crime may be necessary for the jury to realistically evaluate the evidence. See Albrecht v. State, 486 S.W.2d 97, 100 (Tex.Crim.App.1972). This is not to say, however, that background evidence is always admissible or even appropriate, especially when the evidence would not serve to substantially assist the jury in its understanding of the issues or place the material evidence in its proper context. Further, background evidence may be particularly inappropriate when it consists of other crimes, wrongs, or acts that are not part of the same criminal transaction. A careful balance must be maintained so as not to allow background evidence to rupture the general prohibition against evidence offered only to show criminal propensity. This balance is partially achieved in Tennessee by the additional requirement in Rule 404(b)(3) that evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts must be excluded if the unfair prejudice outweighs the probative value or is dangerously close to tipping the scales. See State v. Fleece, 925 S.W.2d 558, 561 (Tenn.Crim.App.1995); State v. Luellen, 867 S.W.2d 736, 740 (Tenn.Crim.App. 1992). [7] Nevertheless, this balance is not completely achieved, because there is no uniform standard in this state by which to determine, in the first instance, when background evidence involving other crimes, wrongs, or acts may be offered for other purposes under Rule 404(b). Although such a standard should be narrowly drawn to avoid the negative implications associated with criminal propensity evidence, the standard should not be so narrow as to sacrifice the jury's understanding of the necessary context of the case. Accordingly, we hold that contextual background evidence, which contains proof of other crimes, wrongs, or acts, may be offered as an other purpose under Rule 404(b) when exclusion of that evidence would create a chronological or conceptual void in the presentation of the case and that void would likely result in significant jury confusion concerning the material issues or evidence in the case. [8] To clarify this holding in terms of Rule 404(b), when the state seeks to offer evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts that is relevant only to provide a contextual background for the case, the state must establish, and the trial court must find, that (1) the absence of the evidence would create a chronological or conceptual void in the state's presentation of its case; (2) the void created by the absence of the evidence would likely result in significant jury confusion as to the material issues or evidence in the case; and (3) the probative value of the evidence is not outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Applying this standard to the facts of this case, we conclude that the trial court did abuse its discretion in allowing the State to introduce evidence of the appellant's involvement in a prior shooting. From our independent reading of the trial transcript, the absence of the Walton brothers shooting would not have created a chronological or conceptual void in the State's theory of the case. According to the State's theory of the case, the story of the Walton shooting was necessary to show (1) why the appellant was displaying his shotgun, and (2) why Bobby Bush was showing off his money. First, we disagree that the absence of the Walton shooting would have created a conceptual void as to whether the appellant possessed a loaded 20-gauge shotgun; testimony from the State's witnesses could have easily supplied this information to the jury. Second, we also disagree that the absence of the Walton shooting would have created a conceptual void as to why the victim was flashing his money. The appellant's knowledge of the victim's money was the key fact necessary to the State's case, because according to the State, it was at that point that the appellant formed the intent to rob the victim. The specific reason that Bush flashed the money is so inconsequential to the State's theory as to be all but trivial. Further, when viewed in light of all the other evidence presented in the five-day trial, it is exceedingly unlikely that any conceptual void created by the absence of the Walton shooting would have significantly impaired the jury's understanding of the material issues or evidence. Because the absence of the Walton shooting would not likely have created a conceptual void that would have significantly impaired the jury's understanding of the case, we conclude that the evidence had so very little relevance that its probative value was greatly exceeded by the danger of unfair prejudice. We certainly agree that multiple limiting instructions to the jury from the trial court worked to alleviate the prejudicial effect of the evidence, and we also presume that juries follow the instructions given to them by the trial court. See, e.g., State v. Johnson, 762 S.W.2d 110, 116 (Tenn. 1988). Nevertheless, the fact that the appellant was involved in two other shootings with the same weapon only three weeks earlier, even if found to be justifiable, was still significantly prejudicial, and when weighed in the balance of Rule 404(b)(3), we find nothing in the probative value of the evidence that would tend to tilt the scales in favor of admitting the evidence. An abuse of discretion standard contemplates that a trial court's ruling will be upheld so long as reasonable minds can disagree as to propriety of the decision made. See Overstreet v. Shoney's, Inc., 4 S.W.3d 694, 709 (Tenn.Ct.App.1999). Although a decision made under this standard will not be lightly reversed on appeal, the discretion of the trial court is not without limits. The evidence of the Walton shooting in this case was not only without sufficient evidentiary relevance, but the danger of unfair prejudice far outweighed the modicum of probative value possessed by the evidence. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing the jury to hear the disputed evidence.