Opinion ID: 1671765
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Irrelevant and Inflammatory Testimony of Dick Davis

Text: ¶ 131. Dick Davis was an FBI informant who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. He was allowed to testify, over defense objection, that on October 21, 1969, he met and had a conversation with Byron De La Beckwith. He testified that although Beckwith neither admitted nor denied killing Medgar Evers, Beckwith discussed selective killings as a partial solution to the right wing's problem. Mr. Davis testified that Beckwith said he would never ask anyone to do anything that he hadn't already done himself. ¶ 132. Beckwith here raises the same objection as to the letters above, i.e., the evidence was irrelevant since it contained no admission to the killing of Medgar Evers, and any probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Using the same analysis as above, we find the evidence was relevant to show that Beckwith had violent tendencies towards his perceived political/social enemies in conjunction with the issue of whether he engaged in the selective killing of Medgar Evers. The question of remoteness is not a problem here, for although Beckwith did not directly admit to killing Evers, his statement that he would never ask anyone to do what he hadn't already done himself certainly suggested that he had killed before, and Evers may have been the victim to which he was referring. We believe that such determination was one for the jury. We find the probative value of this evidence was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, and thus the evidence was properly admitted.