Opinion ID: 2636367
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Common Law Development

Text: {17} Recognition of the relevance of character evidence in the Anglo-American adjudicative process can be traced as far back into the remote mists of English history as our common law heritage can be documented. The first rudimentary jury trials began occurring after official abolition in 1215 A.D. of the medieval practice of trial by ordeal, in which the accused was submitted to what was deemed to be the divine verdict of God by being subjected to life-threatening survival tests employing fire, water, and other perils. See Roger D. Groot, The Early-Thirteenth-Century Criminal Jury, in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200-1800, 3, 5 (J.S. Cockburn & Thomas A. Green eds., 1988) [hereinafter Twelve Good Men and True ]. {18} Even before the thirteenth century institution of jury trials to determine guilt or innocence, historical records indicate that people sometimes placed more faith in their own community knowledge of a suspect's character and reputation than in the judgment of the Almighty. Between 1166 and 1215, for example, the accusatory historical predecessor to the presentment jury would screen defendants to spare some from being forced to undergo trial by ordeal, based in part on a finding of its own regarding the character of the accused. Thomas Andrew Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800, at 8 (1985) [hereinafter Green, Verdict According to Conscience ]; see generally Roger D. Groot, The Jury of Presentment, Before 1215, 26 Am. J. Legal Hist. 1, 1-3 (1982). {19} As the jury trial system developed during the ensuing centuries before American independence from Britain, the historical records confirm the consistently significant role of character in the determination of guilt or innocence. See Thomas A. Green, A Retrospective on the Criminal Trial Jury, 1200-1800, in Twelve Good Men and True, supra, at 358, 362 [hereinafter Green, A Retrospective ]. Initially, community juries based their decisions on their own first-hand knowledge and inquiries, without any process for calling and questioning witnesses. See Green, Verdict According to Conscience, supra, at 26-27. Fact-finding involved an assessment of personal worth: Was the suspect the sort of person likely to have committed a certain act with malice? Id. at 98. {20} The regular use of outside witnesses as a primary source of information did not begin to develop until the latter half of the fifteenth century. See II Wigmore, Evidence, § 575, at 800-01 (Chadbourn rev. 1979); J.B. Post, Jury Lists and Juries in the Late Fourteenth Century, in Twelve Good Men and True, supra, at 65, 75. Toward the end of the Middle Ages the trial jury underwent its epochal transformation from active neighborhood investigators to passive triers. John H. Langbein, Historical Foundations of the Law of Evidence: A View from the Ryder Sources, 96 Colum. L.Rev. 1168, 1170-71 (1996) [hereinafter Langbein, Historical Foundations ]. Without personal knowledge of the character of the persons before them, these passive juries had to depend on the testimony of witnesses to assist them in assessing the character of both the accused and the testifying witnesses. See P.G. Lawson, Lawless Juries? The Composition and Behavior of Hertfordshire Juries, 1573-1624, in Twelve Good Men and True, supra, at 117, 142 [hereinafter Lawson, Lawless Juries? ]; Green, A Retrospective, supra, at 371. For example, in the celebrated 1535 capital trial of Sir Thomas More for treason against King Henry VIII that has been dramatized in A Man For All Seasons, More asked his jury to reject the sworn testimony of his accuser, Solicitor General Richard Rich, because Rich always lay under the odium of a very lying tongue, of a great gamester, and of no good name and character. 1 A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783, at 390 (T.B. Howell ed., London, T.C. Hansard 1816). {21} By 1700, when the transformation from self-informed to witness-informed juries was substantially complete, historical documents reflect the continuing reality that the most important [influence on the outcome of the criminal trial] was the character of the accused. Lawson, Lawless Juries?, supra, at 156; see John H. Langbein, The Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers, 45 U. Chi. L.Rev. 263, 305 (1978) [hereinafter Langbein, Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers ]. Character witnesses played a significant role in informing trial juries that the accused was of such good character that he was unlikely to have committed the charged offense. See 9 W.S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law 207, 230 (1926). {22} Systematic regulation of the use of character testimony and other forms of evidence did not begin developing in any significant way until the courts began allowing defense counsel for the accused in the eighteenth century. See Langbein, Historical Foundations, supra, at 1197. A prominent scholar has suggested that the true historical function of the law of evidence may not have been so much jury control as lawyer control. Langbein, Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers, supra, at 306. The limitations on admissibility embodied in rules of evidence after lawyers began participating in trials were developed to prevent error by excluding from jurors information that might mislead them. Langbein, Historical Foundations, supra, at 1195. {23} One of the most significant limitations that came to be imposed on character testimony was to preclude the prosecution's affirmative use of bad character evidence to show a likelihood of guilt on the part of the accused, not because the evidence lacked logical relevance, but because of its substantial prejudicial effect. See IA Wigmore, supra, § 57, at 1180-81. As observed by Justice Jackson, [t]he overriding policy of excluding such evidence, despite its admitted probative value, is the practical experience that its disallowance tends to prevent confusion of issues, unfair surprise and undue prejudice. Michelson, 335 U.S. at 476, 69 S.Ct. 213; see also Miguel Angel Méndez, California's New Law on Character Evidence: Evidence Code Section 352 and the Impact of Recent Psychological Studies, 31 UCLA L.Rev. 1003, 1045-46 (1984) (summarizing psychological studies that support the law's concerns about the highly prejudicial effects of negative character evidence). {24} The criminally accused, however, has always retained the time-honored right to offer evidence of his own good character in his defense. Michelson, 335 U.S. at 476, 69 S.Ct. 213. In doing so, he opens the door to the prosecution's use of countervailing character witnesses and of cross-examination questions asking defense character witnesses about their awareness of information inconsistent with good character. Id. at 479, 69 S.Ct. 213. Thus, while the law gives defendant the option to show as a fact that his reputation reflects a life and habit incompatible with commission of the offense charged, it subjects his proof to tests of credibility designed to prevent him from profiting by a mere parade of partisans. Id.; see also Elinski, 1997-NMCA-117, ¶ 22, 124 N.M. 261, 948 P.2d 1209 (stating that when a defendant offers reputation or opinion testimony under Rule 404(A)(1) regarding his good character as to a particular trait, the prosecution is entitled to rebut that testimony with evidence regarding the defendant's bad character for the same trait).