Opinion ID: 1684614
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: whether prejudice outweighs probative value

Text: The assessment of the statement's probative value is only the first step in determining admissibility. Under section 90.403, Florida Statutes (2002), evidence is inadmissible if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence. Collateral crime evidence is presumptively prejudicial. See Goodwin v. State, 751 So.2d 537, 547 (Fla.1999); Czubak v. State, 570 So.2d 925, 928 (Fla.1990). As we noted in Jackson, the danger of collateral crime evidence is that the jury will convict the defendant based on prior crimes because these unrelated crimes would go far to convince [individuals] of ordinary intelligence that the defendant was probably guilty of the crime charged. But, the criminal law departs from the standard of the ordinary in that it requires proof of a particular crime. 451 So.2d at 461 (quoting Paul v. State, 340 So.2d 1249, 1250 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976)). Smith's boast that the victims in this case were the thirteenth or fourteenth people that he had shot did little to establish Smith as the shooter compared with the impact the remark left with the jury that Smith was a crazed serial shooter. In this case, any minimal probative value of the remark in identifying Smith as the shooter is far outweighed by its prejudicial impact. Besides bearing only marginally on the issue of who was the shooter, the remark was highly prejudicial in that it could have led the jury to believe that Smith had previously shot many other individuals and was thus likely to have shot the victims in this case. Although we do not know how the jury perceived the remark, we do know that the trial court erroneously recalled, in its findings on one of the statutory aggravators that Smith had stated, That's twelve and thirteen, eight more to go and I'll match Billy the Kid. This remark is exactly the type that, once heard, is difficult to forget. The statement improperly conveyed to the jury that any doubt as to Butterfield's and Brittingham's accounts of the shootings should be resolved in favor of convicting a defendant whose braggadocio suggests he is an ongoing menace. The tremendous potential for unfair prejudice might have been ameliorated by an instruction that the jury should consider the remark solely on the issue of the identity of the shooter or to establish the entire context out of which the charged crimes arose rather than as evidence of any uncharged crime. In the absence of a curative instruction, the effect of this remark on the laypersons who made up the jury was likely to have been stronger than on the trial judge, a trained and experienced observer who nonetheless relied on an erroneously embellished version of the statement in finding that the murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated.