Opinion ID: 746262
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Admission of Prior Bad Acts Evidence

Text: 13 The state trial court allowed two witnesses to testify concerning alleged prior uncharged acts of sexual misconduct, acts very similar to those Dr. Koo allegedly committed on the victim in this case. See Koo, 640 N.E.2d at 100-01 (summarizing testimony of the witnesses). The state appellate court held first that the trial court had erred in admitting that testimony but that the error was harmless. 4 Id. at 101. It also determined that the defense had presented a specific factual claim of hallucination that the prosecution was entitled to rebut with evidence of prior misconduct. Id. at 102. After analyzing the admission of the bad acts evidence, the state court concluded that the evidence was highly probative and that the probative value could not be said to be outweighed by the danger of prejudicial effect. Id. 14 The district court concluded that the admission of that evidence was a matter of state law and therefore did not form the basis for habeas relief under § 2254. It also declared that any error in its admission was harmless because it did not have a  ' substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict. '  R.24 at 5 (quoting O'Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 436, 115 S.Ct. 992, 994-95, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995) (quoting in turn Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 623, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 1713-14, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993))). Finally, the district court determined that, in any case, there was more than sufficient evidence to convict Dr. Koo without that testimony. It held that the petitioner had not been denied a fundamentally fair trial. 15 On appeal, Dr. Koo asserts that the testimony of his two former patients, describing uncharged prior misconduct, was inflammatory bad character evidence, the admission of which violated his due process right to a fair trial. The petitioner relies on the fact that he had objected to its admission at trial and that the state appellate court found that it should not have been admitted. Claiming that there was more than a reasonable possibility that the admission of this testimony contributed to the verdict, Dr. Koo seeks a new trial. 16 When we review a petitioner's submission concerning a state court's evidentiary ruling based on a state rule of evidence, we do not consider the correctness of that court's determination based on the state's evidentiary laws. See Stone v. Farley, 86 F.3d 712, 717-18 (7th Cir.1996) (concluding the petitioner could not be granted habeas relief on a matter purely of state law), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 973, 136 L.Ed.2d 857 (1997); Milone v. Camp, 22 F.3d 693, 702 (7th Cir.1994) (stating that admissibility of evidence is generally a state law issue), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1076, 115 S.Ct. 720, 130 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995). We are limited to deciding whether a conviction violated the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 68, 112 S.Ct. 475, 480, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991). 17 Before this court, therefore, Dr. Koo has the burden of demonstrating that he suffered the deprivation of a constitutionally protected right. He claims that the evidentiary ruling violated due process by denying him a fundamentally fair trial. However, as we explained in Watkins v. Meloy, 95 F.3d 4 (7th Cir.1996), the violation of a state rule of evidence is not a denial of due process. Id. at 6. In Watkins, we considered the issue whether the admission of a woman's testimony that the petitioner had raped her denied him due process of law. 5 We made clear that [s]omething worse than a garden-variety violation of the standard of 404(b) must be shown to cross the constitutional threshold. Id. at 7. 18 When a state keeps out evidence favorable to the criminal defendant or prevents him from cross-examining the prosecution's witnesses, it runs the risk of being found to have prevented him from defending himself or confronting the witnesses against him, in violation of the Sixth Amendment, which the Supreme Court has applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. But when the state merely fails to limit the prosecution's evidence, the only constitutional principle to which the defendant can appeal is a catch-all sense of due process.... If the evidence is probative, it will be very difficult to find a ground for requiring as a matter of constitutional law that it be excluded; and if it is not probative, it will be hard to show how the defendant was hurt by its admission. 19 Id. at 6-7 (internal citations omitted). In this case, the admission of the evidence of Dr. Koo's past sexual conduct with former patients was proffered to rebut the defendant's evidence that the plaintiff had hallucinated the sexual encounter. The state trial judge approached the matter with care. After conducting a full day's hearing on the matter, the trial court admitted the testimony of only two of a possible six witnesses proffered by the prosecutor, the two whose experience had been most similar to the allegations made by the victim in this case. The court also gave jury instructions to minimize the prejudice. In light of this record, it is clear that the state court's admission of highly probative prior bad acts evidence did not violate Dr. Koo's right to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. 20