Opinion ID: 202350
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Prior 1969 Conviction

Text: 28 Kater argues that the evidence of his prior conviction was not in fact relevant to identity under Massachusetts state law, and that this mistake was so serious as to be federally cognizable. He also argues that the evidence, even if thought to be relevant to identity, was so prejudicial as to make his trial fundamentally unfair. 29 He also complains, incorrectly, that the state court should have been bound by the federal law of the case doctrine and therefore should have excluded the prior bad acts evidence because it had not been admitted in the prior three trials. The federal law of the case doctrine does not apply to state courts. See Estelle, 502 U.S. at 67-68, 112 S.Ct. 475; see also Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618, 103 S.Ct. 1382, 75 L.Ed.2d 318 (1983) (Law of the case directs a court's discretion, it does not limit the tribunal's power.). 30 It is, though, still possible that admission of the evidence was fundamentally unfair so as to prejudice Kater. Kater makes this argument, and says that the Commonwealth cannot have it both ways. That is, when Kater invoked the Double Jeopardy Clause to block his fourth trial, the state courts ruled against the claim, finding there was adequate evidence in the record, without admission of the prior bad acts, to support the conviction in a trial where the evidence was not introduced. He argues that this finding that the prior 1969 conviction was not necessary to his conviction became the law of the case. As such, it was surplusage to admit the prior bad acts, and prejudicial to him to do so. 31 On extreme facts, it may be theoretically possible to find that a state court's evaluative judgment—that the prejudicial effect does not substantially outweigh the probative value—was such an unreasonable application of clearly established federal constitutional standards as to result in a fundamentally unfair trial. In practice, such a case—if one exists—will be very rare. The SJC's conclusion that the bad act evidence of Kater's prior conviction showed identity was quite reasonable, and while adverse to Kater, was not unfairly prejudicial. The evidence powerfully went to identity. The SJC recounted the following similarities between Kater's past crime and the Arruda case: both victims were young girls, both were abducted on a rural residential road and placed in a car, both were brought to a dense wooded area, both were tied to a tree in a similar manner, both were bound around the neck in such a way that strangulation might result, and both were left in isolated areas of the woods. Kater VII, 734 N.E.2d at 1176 & n. 7. As the SJC found, the two cases were strikingly similar, with a modus operandi . . . so distinctive as to make the evidence highly probative. Id. at 1176. 32 We agree with the SJC, and see no basis for any conclusion that this evidence of his prior conviction unfairly prejudiced Kater, much less that the trial was fundamentally unfair. 6