Opinion ID: 2636367
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Theories Underlying Admissibility of Character Evidence

Text: {12} The admissibility of character testimony is regulated in two separate areas of our New Mexico Rules of Evidence: in the relevancy rules of Article 4 and in the witness rules of Article 6. Both of those areas are implicated in the issues presented in this case, which call on us to address the admissibility of character testimony as circumstantial evidence of relevant conduct under Rule 11-404(A)(1) (providing for admission in a criminal case of [e]vidence of a pertinent trait of character offered by an accused, or by the prosecution to rebut the same), as well as the admissibility of character testimony as circumstantial evidence of credibility of a witness under Rule 11-608(A) (providing that [t]he credibility of a witness may be attacked or supported by evidence in the form of opinion or reputation . . . [regarding] character for truthfulness or untruthfulness. . . after the character of the witness for truthfulness has been attacked by opinion or reputation evidence or otherwise). The two inquiries are founded on the same underlying beliefs about the relationship between character and conduct, but their uses involve different policy considerations and different rules of application. {13} Courts and commentators have observed that these uses of character evidence are often misunderstood in their own applications and are frequently confused with one another. See Michelson, 335 U.S. at 485, 69 S.Ct. 213 (observing that the rules regarding use of character trait evidence are such that even lawyers and judges, after study and reflection, often are confused); United States v. Cudlitz, 72 F.3d 992, 995-96 (1st Cir.1996) (The main reason is that they represent not a logical pattern but a series of ad hoc accommodations arrived at by the common law over the course of centuries in dealing (differently) with several related problems.); Miguel Angel Méndez, The Law of Evidence and the Search for a Stable Personality, 45 Emory L.J. 221, 221 (1996) (observing that character evidence is still [o]ne of the most misunderstood and confusing aspects of the law of evidence for students, judges, and scholars alike). {14} This case is an illustrative example. The record reflects confusion by counsel on both sides, by the district court, and by the Court of Appeals as to the differing purposes and applications of the separate admissibility of character testimony as substantive evidence and as witness credibility evidence. To aid in understanding and clarification, we first review the theories, history, and purposes relating to their admissibility. {15} A review of the development of character evidence shows that its use extends further back into our legal history than even such fundamental rights as those of an accused to testify or to have the assistance of counsel. The theory underlying the relevance of character evidence is based on our common human experience that [t]he character. . . of the persons we deal with is in daily life always more or less considered by us in estimating the probability of their future conduct. 1A Wigmore, Evidence § 55, at 1159 (Tillers rev.1983). In one of the oldest scraps of papyrus to survive from the days of the ancient Egyptians, a king instructs a young prince that [a] good character is remembered. 1 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature 107 (1973). {16} Modern scientific research now confirms what human beings have always observed in their own family and community relationships, that the average person is able to explain, and even predict, a subject's behavior with a significant degree of accuracy. Susan Marlene Davies, Evidence of Character to Prove Conduct: A Reassessment of Relevancy, 27 Crim. L. Bull. 504, 517 (1991); see Thomas J. Reed, The Character Evidence Defense: Acquittal Based on Good Character, 45 Clev. St. L.Rev. 345, 356 (1997) (According to the best available psychological data, character or personality trait theory has a scientific basis. Human beings do behave more or less consistently across a multitude of similar situations.). One of the predictive tools by which those determinations are made is the consideration of one's character traits based on patterns of past conduct. See, e.g., Walter Mischel & Yuichi Shoda, A Cognitive-Affective System Theory of Personality: Reconceptualizing Situations, Dispositions, Dynamics, and Invariance in Personality Structure, 102 Psychol. Rev. 246, 246 (1995) (summarizing recent empirical data demonstrating that individuals are characterized not only by stable individual differences in their overall levels of behavior, but also by distinctive and stable patterns of behavior variability across situations). Because conduct reflects character, knowledge of character is necessarily helpful in predicting conduct.