Opinion ID: 2544410
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Hatred of Women

Text: Defendant's drawings and writings evincing a hatred of women [5] also satisfy the first three prongs of the Spoto test. They are evidence of motive. Although we have never before considered whether evidence of misogyny can be admitted under CRE 404(b), we find support for our conclusion in the jurisprudence of other states. In People v. Hoffman, 225 Mich.App. 103, 570 N.W.2d 146 (1997), the Michigan Court of Appeals considered whether other-acts evidence tending to establish the defendant's hatred of women could be admitted pursuant to Michigan Rule of Evidence 404(b). [6] The court defined motive as the cause or reason that moves the will and induces action. Hoffman, 570 N.W.2d at 148 (quoting Black's Law Dictionary (rev. 5th ed.)). The court admitted that [t]he distinction between admissible evidence of motive and inadmissible evidence of character or propensity is often subtle. Id. However, there is a distinction, and the court offered a hypothetical to demonstrate it. A white assailant attacks a black man. The assailant makes no demands and takes no money or property; the assailant and the victim do not know each other. The crime is seemingly an inexplicable act of random violence. Later, when the assailant is arrested and charged with the crime, the prosecutor discovers that the defendant has attacked several other people in the past. The court reasoned: Absent a proper purpose (such as to prove a common plan, scheme, or other exception), this other-acts evidence would be inadmissible because its only relevance is to establish the defendant's violent character or propensity towards violence. However, if ... all the defendant's prior victims were African-American and [the] defendant had previously expressed his hatred toward blacks, then the evidence of the defendant's prior assaults would be admissible to prove the defendant's motive for his conduct. By establishing that the defendant harbors a strong animus against people of the victim's race, the other-acts evidence goes beyond establishing a propensity toward violence and tends to show why the defendant perpetrated a seemingly random and inexplicable attack. Id. at 149. Based on this line of reasoning, the court concluded that evidence that defendant hates women and previously had acted on such hostility establishes more than character or propensity. Here, the other-acts evidence was relevant and material to defendant's motive for his unprovoked, cruel, and sexually demeaning attack on his victim. Id. But see State v. Johnson, 71 Ohio St.3d 332, 643 N.E.2d 1098, 1105 (1994) (holding that hatred of women indicates evidence of a character trait that must be excluded). Reasoning that [a]bsent the other-acts evidence establishing motive, the jurors may have found it difficult to believe the victim's testimony that defendant committed the depraved and otherwise inexplicable actions, the Michigan Court of Appeals also held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that the danger of unfair prejudice did not substantially outweigh the probative value of the other-acts evidence. Id. at 149-50. Hoffman drew its hypothetical, and its reasoning from State v. Crumb, 277 N.J.Super. 311, 649 A.2d 879 (1994). There, the court reversed the trial court and held that evidence of a defendant's bigotry was admissible to establish the defendant's motive for randomly attacking an elderly black man. Crumb, 649 A.2d at 884. This evidence consisted of drawings and writings produced by the defendant that sanctioned white supremacy and contained various racial epithets. Id. at 881. The court reasoned that a wider range of evidence should be admissible to establish motive or intent than is permitted in support of other issues because [o]therwise there would often be no means to reach and disclose the secret design or purpose of the act charged in which the very gist of the offense may consist. Id. at 882. Accordingly, the court held that [a]ll evidentiary circumstances, which are relevant to or tend to shed light on the motive or intent of the defendant or which tend fairly to explain his actions are admissible in evidence against him although they may have occurred previous to the commission of the offense. Id. (internal quotations omitted). Reasoning that the written material expressing defendant's hostility toward and hatred of black people is compelling powerful evidence of a motive which helps explain an otherwise inexplicable act of random violence, the court held that the evidence was admissible. Id.; cf. United States v. Mills, 704 F.2d 1553 (11th Cir.1983) (holding that evidence of other acts is admissible if it is linked together in time and circumstances with the crime charged, or if it forms an integral and natural part of the account of the circumstances of the crime, or is necessary in order to complete the story of the crime on trial, and therefore affirming the trial court's admission of evidence establishing defendant's membership in the Aryan Brotherhood because it formed the context, motive, and set-up for the crime and was necessary to make the crime comprehensible to a jury (internal citations and quotations omitted)); cf. also People v. Nicolaus, 54 Cal.3d 551, 286 Cal.Rptr. 628, 817 P.2d 893, 906-07 (1991) (holding that writings of the defendant revealing his extreme dislike of religion, and in particular Christianity, were admissible to prove motive); People v. Olguin, 31 Cal.App.4th 1355, 37 Cal.Rptr.2d 596, 601 (1994) (holding that evidence of gang activity and affiliation is admissible where it is relevant to issues of motive and intent). We are persuaded by the reasoning of Hoffman and Crumb. Dr. Meloy testified that one of the primary reasons perpetrators of sexual homicide fantasize is to express deeply felt hostility towards women. This hostility eventually crescendos into a sexual homicide where the female victim is degraded, treated as a sex object, and sexually mutilated. Thus, Defendant's hatred of women, as exemplified in many of his drawings and writings, is not just a motive for the crime, but for why the crime was committed in this specific manner. Cf. People v. Mendoza, 876 P.2d 98, 103 (Colo.App.1994) (holding that evidence of gang affiliation was admissible as motive where it was offered not to prove that defendant was more likely to kill because he was a gang member, but because his membership in a particular gang established a motive for why he was more likely to murder a particular victim after deliberation). As such, Defendant's drawings and writings reflecting his hatred of women satisfy the first three prongs of the Spoto test.