Opinion ID: 1172140
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admission of Defendant's Prior Conviction for Conspiracy to Commit Murder

Text: (7) At trial, defendant admitted agreeing with Anthony and McIntosh to participate in killing Ewing but said that his agreement was a sham intended to persuade Anthony and McIntosh to use the services of defendant and Younge to launder money for FITC. The trial court, after a hearing, then permitted the prosecution to rebut this testimony by introducing evidence detailing defendant's participation and conviction in an unrelated 1971 murder-for-hire conspiracy to show that defendant's intent to conspire to kill Ewing and his intent to kill Ewing were real and not feigned. Defendant contends that in admitting this evidence the trial court abused its discretion and violated his right to due process. The evidence was properly admitted. Defendant put in issue the sincerity of his admitted agreement to the conspiracy to kill Ewing. Evidence that defendant had in the past conspired to kill someone else was relevant to show that defendant's agreement to the conspiracy to kill was genuine and not feigned. It was therefore admissible under Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b), which permits the introduction of evidence of other crimes to prove some fact ... other than [the defendant's] disposition to commit such an act ( ibid. ), for its purpose was not to show that defendant was likely to engage in murder conspiracies but rather to show that, if he was otherwise proven to be a member of a murder conspiracy, it was likely that his intent was genuine. (See People v. Rowland (1992) 4 Cal.4th 238, 261 [14 Cal. Rptr.2d 377, 841 P.2d 897] [`if a person acts similarly in similar situations, he probably harbors the same intent in each instance'].) It was also relevant to show defendant's intent to kill Ewing, for that too was in issue. (See id. at pp. 260-261.) Nor did the trial court abuse its discretion in concluding that the probative value of this evidence was not significantly outweighed by its potential for undue prejudice and in deciding not to exclude the evidence under Evidence Code section 352. The trial court guarded against any improper use of the evidence by admonishing the jury before the evidence was received that it could only be used to prove defendant's intent, and not to show his propensity to commit the charged crimes. In addition, the court later gave the jury a limiting instruction to the same effect. Nor was the evidence inflammatory or otherwise of a such a nature that the jury would have had unusual difficulty in limiting its use to the question of intent. Moreover, from defendant's own testimony the jury already knew of defendant's significant criminal record, including a plea of guilty and conviction of assault with intent to kill. This was not a case where, in the absence of the challenged evidence of other crimes, defendant would have appeared to the jury to have led a blameless life. Finally, admission of the evidence did not render the trial fundamentally unfair in violation of due process. There is no reason to believe that, as defendant contends, the jury failed to maintain the presumption of innocence once it learned of defendant's participation in the 1971 murder conspiracy. The conspiracy evidence, while adverse to defendant, was not of such overwhelming force that it would have caused a reasonable juror to abandon the trial court's instructions and presume defendant's guilt. The conspiracy was distant in time, unrelated in its circumstances to the crimes for which defendant was being tried, and its intended victim was not killed; although the conspiracy had probative value as to defendant's intent in this case, it would not have blinded jurors to the weight of the other evidence in the case.