Opinion ID: 2082244
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prior Criminal Act

Text: The defendant's first assignment of error challenges the testimony of Gurghigian. The attack is multifaceted. Initially, he argues that the admission of testimony concerning prior criminal conduct by defendantthe starter gun theftwas error. The defendant correctly states that such evidence generally lacks relevance. He concedes, however, that a well-settled exception to this rule admits such evidence if it tends to establish guilty knowledge, intent, motive, design, plan, scheme, system, or the like. State v. Colangelo, 55 R.I. 170, 173-74, 179 A. 147, 149 (1935). The defendant argues that the exception elucidated in Colangelo is inapplicable in this case because it only applies to other criminal conduct that has a similar modus operandi to the crime being tried. Here, he contends, the conduct of the person in the hobby store bears no resemblance to the conduct of the person in the hospital parking lot. For this reason, he concludes, the Colangelo exception is inapposite. We disagree. The exception outlined in Colangelo is not limited to situations involving similar acts. It also applies to any series of eventsalthough factually dissimilarconstituting a plan or design to achieve an ultimate criminal objective. Here the trial justice reasonably concluded, after a voir dire on a motion to suppress, that the hobby store theft, committed some 20 minutes before the parking lot incident, was part of a larger plan to steal a car. Moreover, we do not believe that the prejudice inherent in this testimony outweighed its probative value.