Opinion ID: 2538692
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rebuttal Evidence in General

Text: Because the trial court limited the use of evidence regarding the defendant's silence to rebuttal purposes only, we now consider whether such use would be appropriate under the facts of this case. In doing so, we first examine the nature and purpose of rebuttal evidence, and then consider whether and how the use of the defendant's silence in this case might fit within that framework. Rebuttal evidence is that evidence which tends to contradict the adverse party's case, whether it be challenging the testimony of a specific witness or refuting the adverse party's entire theory or claim. People v. Trujillo, 49 P.3d 316, 320 (Colo.2002). Unlike impeachment evidence, which is more focused on the credibility of an individual declarant, [r]ebuttal evidence goes to the heart of the case, reflecting upon the truth of facts upon which the other side relies. People v. Cobb, 962 P.2d 944, 953 (Colo.1998) (Kourlis, J., dissenting). Thus, rebuttal evidence is essentially substantive in nature. Rebuttal evidence is admitted at the trial court's discretion, and may take a variety of forms, including any competent evidence which explains, refutes, counteracts, or disproves the evidence put on by the other party, even if the rebuttal evidence also tends to support the party's case-in-chief. People v. Rowerdink, 756 P.2d 986, 994 (Colo. 1988). In order to present rebuttal evidence, the offering party necessarily must demonstrate that the evidence is relevant to rebut a specific claim, theory, witness or other evidence of the adverse party. By its very nature, then, rebuttal evidence generally should be admitted after the adverse party has presented its evidence. Trujillo, 49 P.3d at 320. At the very minimum, a trial court must avoid making an admissibility determination before it has enough information to conclude whether such evidence is relevant to rebut the adverse party's case. Thus, where the prosecution seeks to rebut a defendant's claim or theory using evidence of the defendant's silence, it must clearly establish how that silence is relevant to that claim or theory. Here, in order for the prosecution to introduce evidence of the defendant's silence as rebutting her claim that she was legally insane, the prosecution must demonstrate how that silence renders more probable the fact that the defendant was legally sane at the moment she shot the victim.

The relevance of a criminal defendant's silence has been examined by the courts several times over the last few decades. The United States Supreme Court, addressing the use of an accused's silence at the initial police interrogation, noted that [i]n most circumstances silence is so ambiguous that it is of little probative force. United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 176, 95 S.Ct. 2133, 45 L.Ed.2d 99 (1975). In that case, the prosecution relied upon evidence that the defendant was unresponsive to questioning regarding the source of money found on him, in order to impeach the defendant's testimony at his trial for robbery that he had an alibi and a legitimate reason for possessing the money. Id. The Court ruled that proof of the defendant's silence was inadmissible as lacking probative value because the defendant's silence could just as easily be taken to indicate reliance on the right to remain silent as to support an inference that the explanatory testimony was a later fabrication. Id. at 177, 95 S.Ct. 2133. The Court further considered the prejudicial impact such evidence might have on the jury: Not only is silence at the time of arrest generally not very probative of a defendant's credibility, but it also has a significant potential for prejudice. The danger is that the jury is likely to assign much more weight to the defendant's previous silence than is warranted. Id. at 180, 95 S.Ct. 2133. Thus, the Court ruled that evidence regarding the defendant's silence should have been excluded. Other courts have reached similar conclusions, particularly within the context of an insanity defense. The Seventh Circuit ruled that post- Miranda silence was inadmissible to prove sanity, holding that use of the silence would violate the defendant's right to due process. Thomas v. Indiana, 910 F.2d 1413, 1414 (7th Cir.1990) (applying the United States Supreme Court's holding in Wainwright v. Greenfield, 474 U.S. 284, 106 S.Ct. 634, 88 L.Ed.2d 623 (1986)). In a trial for murder, the prosecution introduced testimony that the defendant said nothing after receiving his Miranda warnings in order to show that [the defendant] was reserved and quiet and not in a manic state. Id. In ruling that the admission of such testimony was unconstitutional, the court also commented on the minimal probative value of such evidence: How mere silenceall we have in this case ... can be evidence of sanity puzzles us. Insane people frequently are withdrawn and uncommunicative; raving is not the only style of maniac. Id. Thus, although its holding ultimately rested on due process grounds, the Seventh Circuit clearly recognized the dubious evidentiary value of silence as it relates to making sanity more or less probable. Relying on evidentiary principles, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution could not introduce evidence of a defendant's post-arrest, post- Miranda silence and attorney request in order to rebut the defendant's claim of insanity. State v. Burwick, 442 So.2d 944 (Fla.1983). There, the defendant was charged with sexual assault, but claimed to have been insane and blacked out at the time of the crime. The prosecution introduced evidence that when arrested three hours after the incident, the defendant was non-responsive and requested his attorney. Id. at 946-47. In ruling the evidence inadmissible, the court combined constitutional with evidentiary considerations, but relied primarily on the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in Hale that post-arrest, post- Miranda silence is inherently ambiguous and has dubious probative value. Burwick, 442 So.2d at 948. Finally, in People v. Wanke, 311 Ill.App.3d 801, 244 Ill.Dec. 546, 726 N.E.2d 142 (2000), an Illinois appellate court ruled that a defendant's post-arrest but pre- Miranda silence and request for an attorney were inadmissible to prove the defendant's sanity at the time of the burglary. In order to defeat an insanity defense based in part on memory loss at the time of the charged robbery, the prosecution introduced testimony that upon arrest, just minutes after the crime took place, the defendant refused to answer questions and invoked his right to counsel. Id. at 144. Although the court rested its decision primarily on the defendant's privilege against self-incrimination, the court went on to comment on the minimal probative value of such evidence, noting: Even though defendant might suffer from a psychiatric disorder that would render him legally insane, `[i]nsanity is not the equivalent of stupidity.' Id. at 145 (internal citations omitted). The court of appeals has previously explored the outer limits of relevance in the context of an insanity defense in People v. Galimanis, 944 P.2d 626 (Colo.App.1997), where it upheld a trial court's exclusion of testimony regarding the defendant's legal sanity two years prior to the killing as well as testimony regarding specific instances of the defendant's conduct at the state hospital in the years between the killing and the trial. In so ruling, the court observed: Traditionally, the scope of evidence admissible on the issue of insanity is broad. While it is proper to inquire into the mental condition of the defendant both before and after the commission of the act, the admissibility of evidence in an insanity trial depends on whether `the inquiry bears such relation to the person's condition of mind at the time of the crime as to be worthy of consideration in respect thereto.' Id. at 629, (quoting Garrison v. People, 151 Colo. 388, 392, 378 P.2d 401, 403 (1963)) (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added). Thus, while the fact-finding process calls for the admission of all evidence relevant to a defendant's claim of insanity at the time of an offense, Colorado courts have always limited such evidence to that which is probative of the defendant's mental condition at the actual time of the crime. Additionally, this court has addressed the probative value of a defendant's silence in the context of the affirmative defense of duress. People v. Quintana, 665 P.2d 605 (Colo.1983). Specifically, we considered whether the defendant's failure to make a statement upon arrest that he was forced at gunpoint to participate in a robbery tended to disprove his claim of duress. We concluded that the testimony regarding his silence should have been excluded due to the many possible explanations for the defendant's post arrest silence. Id. at 611. We relied solely on the evidentiary principle that [e]vidence that is so remotely related to an issue as to afford only conjectural inferences should not be admitted. Id. Thus, because we found that the defendant's silence in no way rendered his claim of duress more or less likely, we held the evidence to be irrelevant and inadmissible. Id. In sum, when determining the admissibility of rebuttal testimony, particularly in the insanity context, a trial court must be vigilant in order to ensure that the well-established tenets set forth in CRE 401 and CRE 403 are satisfied. Evidence regarding a defendant's silence must therefore possess sufficient probative value as to the defendant's sanity at the time of the criminal act so as to exceed any unfair prejudicial impact that may be caused by the testimony. With this principle in mind, we turn to the instant case.
Under the facts of this case, testimony regarding the defendant's uncommunicativeness was not proper rebuttal testimony because it was not relevant under CRE 401 and was unfairly prejudicial under CRE 403. [7] The heart of the defendant's claim of insanity is that she temporarily dissociated at the precise moment that she shot Mileski. Although the key defense psychiatrist did rely somewhat on the defendant's lack of memory in finding that the defendant dissociated at the time of the shooting, that psychiatrist also opined that the defendant had come out of her dissociative state by the time she was interacting with police and medical personnel. Thus, under the defendant's theory, her non-responsiveness at the crime scene and at the hospital bears virtually no relationship to her claim that she did not remember the actual shooting, and therefore is irrelevant to whether she was sane at the moment she shot the victim. Nevertheless, the People argue that the defendant's silence rebuts her claim that she did not recall the shooting, and therefore rebuts her insanity defense. However, the testimony of the People's own experts belies their argument. All of the prosecution's psychiatric experts concluded that the defendant was legally sane at the time she shot Mileski. Moreover, the prosecution's experts all agreed that their findings were in no way impacted by whether the defendant did or did not recall the shooting. Thus, under the prosecution's theory, the defendant's memory of the shooting, or lack thereof, bears virtually no relationship to her sanity at the moment of the shooting. As such, any purported link between the defendant's silence and her claim of memory loss was immaterial to the People's case. We conclude that the defendant's silence does not render her sanity at the actual time of the criminal act any more probable than it would be without such evidence. Therefore, the evidence regarding her silence ought to have been excluded under CRE 401. Moreover, testimony regarding the defendant's silence ought to have been excluded under the CRE 403 balancing test, which allows a trial court to exclude otherwise relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury. CRE 403. For example, a trial court should exclude evidence which has only the most minimal probative value, and which requires a jury to engage in undue speculation as to the probative value of that evidence. See, e.g., People v. Franklin, 782 P.2d 1202, 1206 (Colo.App.1989) (finding that the danger of unfair prejudice or confusion of issues outweighed the probative value of a hearsay statement, where the jury would have been required to reach a number of speculative assumptions about that statement in order to find any probative value). Furthermore, evidence should be excluded where it results in unfair prejudice, such that it calls for the jury to reach its decision on an improper basis. See, e.g., People v. Nuanez, 973 P.2d 1260, 1263 (Colo. 1999); People v. Dist. Court, 869 P.2d 1281, 1286 (Colo.1994). Under these facts, the danger of unfair prejudice and the likelihood of misleading the jury far outweighed any possible probative value that testimony regarding the defendant's silence might have had. That the defendant did not respond to questions regarding the shootings at the victim's apartment is neither proof of her sanity nor inconsistent with her later claim of not remembering what happened. She may have been unable to respond due to a lack of memory, confusion, disorientation, or the pain of her own gunshot wounds. She may have been unwilling to respond due to her awareness of the criminal justice system or a fear of incriminating herself, even if she did not know or believe she had committed any crime. As such, a jury easily could be misled by evidence regarding the defendant's uncommunicativeness. Given that even the psychiatric experts could not find any relevance in the defendant's behavior several hours after the shooting, the evidence had great potential for misleading the jury. Moreover, the evidence likely had an unfair prejudicial impact in that it called for the jury to reach its decision regarding the defendant's sanity on an improper basis. Indeed, the prosecutor himself, in both his opening and closing statements, played on that possibility by reminding jurors that a person with no memory surely would have spoken up. Yet the People's own expert witnesses were unable to reach any sort of consensus that her silence was probative of her sanity, or, more importantly, that her purported dissociation and subsequent memory failure had any bearing on her legal culpability. Thus, by relying on the defendant's silence throughout their case, the People encouraged the jurors to rely on their own conceptions about mental illness and to find the defendant legally sane based largely on her pre-arrest silence. The unfair prejudicial impact of admitting the testimony regarding the defendant's silence so far outweighed any minimal probative value that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the evidence.
Additionally, the trial court prematurely determined the admissibility of such testimony. Before admitting rebuttal testimony, a trial court must ensure that such evidence is relevant to refute or counteract the adverse party's case. See People v. Rowerdink, 756 P.2d 986, 994 (Colo.1988). Accordingly, a trial court must possess sufficient information regarding the adverse party's evidence or claims in order to properly determine whether the testimony is appropriate for rebuttal purposes. At the time of the pre-trial hearing, it was unclear whether and how defense counsel might have raised the issue of the defendant's ability to observe and respond. Rather, the trial court should have withheld its admissibility determination until that time at which it became apparent that testimony regarding the defendant's silence tended to contradict the evidence put forth by the defense. In fact, the defendant's case did not rest upon her ability to observe and respond several hours after the killing, but instead focused on her dissociative state at the moment she shot the victim. Thus, the trial court erred in ruling on the admissibility of rebuttal evidence too early.
Finally, the trial court abused its discretion in allowing what it deemed rebuttal evidence to come in during the case-in-chief and in failing to provide any sort of limiting instruction as to the purpose of that evidence. When evidence is admissible for one purpose but not for another purpose, the trial court, upon request, shall restrict the evidence to its proper scope and instruct the jury accordingly. CRE 105. At the pre-trial hearing on the admissibility of testimony regarding the defendant's uncommunicativeness, the prosecution argued that the evidence should be admitted to rebut the defendant's claim of insanity by proving that she knew right from wrong, and conceded that if the Court would admit it for those limited purposes, we think we need [a] limiting instruction [as to] why that evidence is coming in. The prosecution's concession that such an instruction was necessary put the trial court on notice that it was required to give a limiting instruction to the jury as to the purpose of the evidence. Nevertheless, the trial court provided no guidance to the jury as to the purpose of that evidence at the time it came in, nor did it include any limiting instruction regarding the defendant's non-responsiveness at the close of trial. Rather, the jury was left to assign to such testimony whatever meaning the jury itself deemed appropriate.