Opinion ID: 1241931
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: references to defendant's criminality and incorrigibility

Text: The prejudicial error requiring a new trial in this case relates to information improperly conveyed to the jury about the defendant's prior criminality and anti social behavior at various stages of the trial. Although the defendant failed to make a contemporaneous objection when these incidents occurred, he did raise them as error in his motion for a new trial. We conclude that the cumulation of these irregularities constitutes reversible error. Crim.P. 52(b). At the commencement of jury selection the trial judge read to the jury panel not only the charge of assault in the first degree but also the two counts alleging prior felony convictions for aggravated robbery in 1976. The judge also informed the jury panel that these two additional counts were in violation of Colorado Revised Statutes 1973, 16-13-101(1) as amended, punishment for habitual criminals. During the initial phase of the trial on the substantive offense the state's only witness, in response to the district attorney's question about how he knew the defendant prior to the date of the assault, testified that the defendant was housed in cellhouse 7 in the R-1 Section for the incorrigible population . . . . After the jury returned a guilty verdict on assault in the first degree, the district attorney presented evidence of the defendant's two prior convictions. The trial court admitted into evidence a duly authenticated copy of the official records of the Denver district court pertaining to the defendant's conviction for aggravated robbery in June 1976. These records properly included the judgment of conviction, sentence and mittimus; however, they improperly included the original information charging the defendant not only with aggravated robbery but also the felony of second-degree kidnapping. The district attorney followed a similarly infirm procedure with respect to proving the defendant's conviction for aggravated robbery in August 1976 in the district court of Jefferson County. Attached to the judgment of conviction, sentence and mittimus for aggravated robbery was a copy of the affidavit originally filed in that case requesting an arrest warrant for the defendant for the crime of aggravated robbery and first-degree kidnapping. The affidavit described in detail the manner in which the defendant committed the aggravated robbery and the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged kidnapping. The court also admitted into evidence the penitentiary records of the defendant indicating that on January 11, 1977, a detainer was lodged against him for rioting in a correctional institution and criminal mischief. We have observed on prior occasions that evidence of prior criminality casts damning innuendo likely to beget prejudice in the minds of juries. Stull v. People, 140 Colo. 278, 284, 344 P.2d 455, 458 (1959); accord, People v. Honey, Colo., 596 P.2d 751 (1979); Huerta v. People, 168 Colo. 276, 450 P.2d 648 (1969); Naranjo v. People, 161 Colo. 76, 419 P.2d 953 (1966); Kostal v. People, 144 Colo. 505, 357 P.2d 70 (1960); Abbott v. People, 89 Colo. 121, 299 P. 1053 (1931); Cargill v. People, 73 Colo. 218, 214 P. 387 (1923). The reason for the general exclusion of evidence of prior criminality and bad character in the case of a criminal defendant is that he may be found guilty on the present charge, not because he is believed to be guilty, but because his bad character may be thought by the jury to deserve punishment or to deprive an erroneous verdict of its moral injustice. III A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 921 at 724 (Chadbourn rev. ed. 1970); see generally Lawson, Credibility and Character: A Different Look at an Interminable Problem, 50 Notre Dame Law. 758 (1975). At the very inception of this case, the disclosure to the jury panel of the defendant's two prior felony convictions so burdened the trial with the baggage of his prior criminality that a fair trial as we know it became an impossibility. This weighty encumbrance was made even heavier during the trial by the improper reference to his incorrigibility, and by the equally improper admission of evidence relating to kidnapping offenses (for which he apparently was never convicted) and to his alleged rioting and criminal mischief while in an institution (for which he apparently was never charged). See, e. g., Hawkins v. People, 161 Colo. 556, 423 P.2d 581 (1967); Webb v. People, 97 Colo. 262, 49 P.2d 381 (1935); Tarling v. People, 69 Colo. 477, 194 P. 939 (1921). Where, as here, the defendant is charged with a serious substantive offense and with habitual criminality, and is proceeding pro se, the district attorney and the court must be sensitive to their mutual responsibility to avoid the admission of, and any reference to, inherently prejudicial matters. The defendant's prior criminality and bad character had no place in the first phase of the trial proceedings because the defendant did not take the witness stand in his own defense. Section 16-13-103(5), C.R.S.1973 (1978 Repl.Vol. 8). The statutory procedures mandate a bifurcated trial in this situation precisely to obviate the prejudicial effect of prior convictions on the trial of the substantive offense. See People v. Fullerton, 186 Colo. 97, 525 P.2d 1166 (1974); Heinze v. People, 127 Colo. 54, 253 P.2d 596 (1953); Routa v. People, 117 Colo. 564, 192 P.2d 436 (1948). Likewise, the admission into evidence during the second phase of the trial of offenses not alleged as the basis of habitual criminality violated a basic precept of our criminal law: Thou shalt not convict a person of an offense by proof that he is guilty of another. Stull v. People, 140 Colo. at 284, 344 P.2d at 458. The People contend that the errors in this case were harmless because the substantive charge involved proof that the defendant, while an inmate at the penitentiary, assaulted a prison guard. Thus, the argument concludes, evidence of the defendant's status as a convicted felon was inevitably admissible on the substantive offense. We do not agree that the errors in this case were harmless. The defendant's status as an inmate at the time of the assault could have been established without parading before the jury the nature and number of defendant's prior convictions and his alleged incorrigibility. Also, the prosecution could well have proven the defendant's two prior convictions in the secondary stage of the trial without informing the jury that he had been involved in two kidnappings, rioting in an institution and criminal mischief. Under the circumstances present here, the cumulative effect of these errors and defects substantially affected the fairness of the trial proceedings and the integrity of the fact-finding process. See, e. g., Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946); People v. Hardin, Colo., 607 P.2d 1291 (1980); People v. Bugarin, 181 Colo. 62, 507 P.2d 875 (1973); Crim.P. 52(b). The judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded to the district court for a new trial. ERICKSON, J., does not participate.