Opinion ID: 2022360
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Statements of Concern for the Victim's Safety

Text: The majority finds statements of Colip's and Manis's concern for the victim's safety to be admissible as establishing the victim's state of mind. There are two problems with this analysis. First, the victim's state of mind must be relevant to some issue in the case. The key to Lock v. State, 567 N.E.2d 1155 (Ind.1991) was that the relationship between the victim and the accused was one of the contested issues at trial. Id. at 1159-60. Because the defendant in Lock claimed a harmonious domestic relationship, and the victim's statements tended to controvert that claim, the statements were admissible in Lock (a common law case) and under Indiana Evidence Rule 803(3) as evidence of the declarant's emotion (fear) that was relevant to an issue in the case (the quality of the victim's relationship to the killer). As a general proposition, however, the victim's state of mind, as such, is irrelevant to a murder charge. To be relevant it must be tied to some subsidiary issue in the case. In this case, in view of the victim's having filed for an annulment, there does not appear to have been any dispute that the victim and the defendant were having a difficult marital relationship, and the parties do not contend that the relationship was in issue. For that reason, the victim's state of mind does not seem to bear on any issue. A second problem arises in this case because the statements of the witnesses were not reports of what the victim said or did, or even expressions of opinions as to the victim's state of mind. Rather, Colip and Manis testified as to their fears for the victim's safety. Their fears, as such, are susceptible to various interpretations, some perhaps much more sinister than the statements or acts on which the witnesses' beliefs were based. The witnesses' statements of concern for the victim's safety also smacked of opinions as to the defendant's guilt or innocence which are expressly prohibited by Indiana Evidence Rule 704(b). In short, the mental state of Colip and Manis is relevant to no issue in the case. If the relationship between the defendant and the victim were an issue, then statements or acts of the victim might be admissible to show her mental state to the extent it reflects on that relationship. In that circumstance, to the extent either witness had personal knowledge of statements or events that bear on that relationship, the witness's account of the statement or event may be admitted. But that account alone, not the conclusions the witness draws from it, is admissible.