Opinion ID: 1494226
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Homicide

Text: The Commonwealth contends that the victim's statements were relevant to the murder charge because they revealed the victim's perception of her relationship with Appellant and, inferentially, Appellant's intent and motive. Use of the statements for this purpose is problematic, however. While Pennsylvania law permits the admission of evidence of prior incidents, within the context of a marital relationship as well as elsewhere, in which the accused threatened, assaulted, or quarreled with the decedent, for the purpose of proving ill will, motive, or malice, such evidence remains subject to the general rules of competency and relevance. See Commonwealth v. Ulatoski, 472 Pa. 53, 60-61, 63, 371 A.2d 186, 190, 191 (1977). Among the rules of competency is the hearsay rule. See Commonwealth v. Myers, 530 Pa. 396, 401, 609 A.2d 162, 165 (1992).
The Commonwealth argues that the statements in question were not hearsay relative to the homicide charge because they were not offered for their truth, but only to show the victim's state of mind. Such an assertion, without more, would be fatal to the Commonwealth's argument, since the victim's state of mind (with narrow exceptions, discussed infra ) is considered irrelevant to a murder prosecution. See Laich, ___ Pa. at ___, 777 A.2d at 1061; Commonwealth v. Auker, 545 Pa. 521, 547, 681 A.2d 1305, 1319 (1996) (citing Commonwealth v. Thornton, 494 Pa. 260, 431 A.2d 248 (1981)); see also Woods v. State, 733 So.2d 980, 987 (Fla.1999) (observing that a homicide victim's state of mind prior to the fatal event generally is neither at issue nor probative of any material issue raised in the murder prosecution). To overcome this obstacle, the Commonwealth contends, and the majority agrees, that the victim's state of mind, as revealed by the purportedly non-hearsay statements, was evidence of the contentious state of the marital relationship, and, in turn, the malice which the victim perceived in the relationship was probative of Appellant's intent and motive. There are circumstances in which a person's out-of-court assertion may be relevant to his or her state of mind even though it is patently untrue. See, e.g., MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 274 (suggesting, as an example, when an individual whose sanity is at issue is heard to proclaim, I am King Henry the Eighth). This is not such a case. The victim's PFA statements shed no light upon Appellant's motive or intent unless they are considered as evidence, not merely of the victim's mental impressions, but of Appellant's actual conduct. Only if it is assumed that the assertions made in the PFA application are true, and that Appellant had indeed threatened the victim with harm in the past, do those assertions reveal anything about Appellant's subsequent intent and motive. In sum, the Commonwealth cannot credibly argue both relevance and non-hearsay. See Gordon Van Kessel, Hearsay Hazards in the American Criminal Trial: An Adversary-Oriented Approach, 49 HASTINGS L.J. 477, 537 n. 250 (Mar.1998) (describing such an approach as merely a circuitous way of using the statement to prove defendant's conduct). To conclude otherwise is to ignore the distinction between non-hearsay statements which circumstantially indicate a present state of mind regardless of their truth, and hearsay statements which indicate a state of mind because of their truth. Christine Arguello, The Marital Discord Exemption to Hearsay: Fact or Judicially Created Fiction?, 46 U. KAN. L. REV. 63, 79 (Nov.1997) [hereinafter, Arguello, The Marital Discord Exemption ] (quoting Betts v. Betts, 3 Wash.App. 53, 473 P.2d 403, 407 (1970)). If the victim's statements were to be in any way relevant, they had to be offered for their truth, and therefore they were hearsay, inadmissible unless encompassed by the state of mind or other exception to the hearsay rule. [2]
Courts of other jurisdictions have generally ruled against the admissibility, within the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule, of evidence of the defendant's prior threats against the victim. As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia explained in United States v. Brown, 490 F.2d 758 (D.C.Cir.1973), a statement by the victim which inferentially implicates the defendant, even if introduced solely for the purpose of showing the victim's state of mind and accompanied by a limiting instruction to that effect, entails the risk of severely prejudicing the defendant. While such statements are admittedly of some value in presenting to the jury a complete picture of all the facts and circumstances surrounding the homicide,... [they] are fraught with inherent dangers and require the imposition of rigid limitations. The principal danger is that the jury will consider the victim's statement of fear as somehow reflecting on defendant's state of mind rather than the victim'si.e., as a true indication of defendant's intentions, actions, or culpability. Such inferences are highly improper and where there is a strong likelihood that they will be drawn by the jury the danger of injurious prejudice is particularly evident. Id. at 765 (footnotes and citations omitted). McCormick has specified the dangers arising from such statements: [t]he possibility of overpersuasion, the prejudicial character of the evidence, and the relative weakness and speculative nature of the inference .... MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 276. [3] The root of these dangers, as various commentators have noted, is that statements of prior threats have but a tenuous connection to the underlying components of trustworthiness which form the premise for admitting state of mind evidence. See Reagan F. McClellan, Note, State v. Alston: North Carolina Continues to Broaden Its Mind to Admissibility of a Victim's Out-of-Court Statements Under the Rule 803(3) Hearsay Exception in Criminal Cases, 32 WAKE FOREST L. REV. 1327, 1356 (1997) [hereinafter McClellan, State v. Alston ]; Arguello, The Marital Discord Exemption, at 76. The principal component of the trustworthiness of state of mind evidence is its spontaneity and the resulting probability that, being spontaneous, it is also sincere. See McClellan, State v. Alston , at 1356; MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 274. A victim's statements concerning threats previously made by the defendant, in contrast, constitute statements of the victim's memory about the past, not statements of her then-existing state of mind. Cole v. State, 307 Ark. 41, 818 S.W.2d 573, 577 (1991); see also State v. Bell, 950 S.W.2d 482, 484 (Mo.1997) ( en banc ) (declaring that the victim's hearsay testimony concerning past abuse was not a declaration of her state of mind[, but instead] was pure narration of past acts by another). That such statements look to the past rather than the present lessens their trustworthiness. See Commonwealth v. Fletcher, 561 Pa. 266, 304, 750 A.2d 261, 282 (2000) (Saylor, J., concurring), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1035, 121 S.Ct. 623, 148 L.Ed.2d 533 (2000); McClellan, State v. Alston , at 1356. So, too, does the victim's use of narration. See Brown, 490 F.2d at 775. The more closely the evidence bears upon the fundamental question of the defendant's guilt or innocence, and the more narration of the defendant's past acts is included in the evidence, the greater the risk of prejudice. See id. at 766, 775; see also Arguello, The Marital Discord Exemption, at 76 (asserting that such evidence presents all of the traditional hearsay dangers because the victims' memories, perceptions, and sincerities cannot be tested). As a result of these concerns, courts have generally limited the admissibility of statements such as those at issue here to situations in which the victim/declarant's mental state is directly at issue in the case. See, e.g., Bell, 950 S.W.2d at 483. Most commonly, courts permit the use of extrajudicial statements by the victim when the defendant has alleged that he acted in self-defense or that the death was the result of suicide or accident. See Woods, 733 So.2d at 987; State v. Bauer, 598 N.W.2d 352, 367 (Minn.1999). In such instances, the increased relevancy of the evidence may outweigh the possibility of prejudice. See Brown, 490 F.2d at 767. [4] None of the above circumstances was present in this case. To the contrary, the ultimate purpose for which the Commonwealth offered the victim's statementsto serve as evidence of Appellant's intent and motiveis precisely the purpose that is generally considered impermissible. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth argues, and the majority concludes, that the decisional law of Pennsylvania permits the admission of such evidence. There is some support for the Commonwealth's position. See Commonwealth v. Fletcher, 561 Pa. 266, 293-94, 750 A.2d 261, 275-76 (2000) (holding that the victim's assertion that he had used a package of drugs belonging to the appellant was admissible under the state of mind exception as evidence of the appellant's motive); Commonwealth v. Chandler, 554 Pa. 401, 411, 721 A.2d 1040, 1045 (1998) (holding similarly); Commonwealth v. Collins, 550 Pa. 46, 58-60, 703 A.2d 418, 424-25 (1997) (holding similarly), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1015, 119 S.Ct. 538, 142 L.Ed.2d 447 (1998); see also Commonwealth v. Puksar, 559 Pa. 358, 368, 740 A.2d 219, 225 (1999) (holding that similar evidence was admissible as non-hearsay, as it was offered to establish the appellant's motive and not for its truth), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 829, 121 S.Ct. 79, 148 L.Ed.2d 42 (2000). There is case law supporting the contrary position as well. In Myers, the trial court admitted out-of-court statements by the victim that the appellant/husband had beaten her on several occasions. See Myers, 530 Pa. at 399, 609 A.2d at 164. This Court reversed, observing that, while evidence concerning the relationship between the victim and the appellant was relevant to prove the appellant's malice and motive, such evidence remained subject to the general rule of competency. See id. at 400, 609 A.2d at 165. The Court specifically held that there is no special exception to the hearsay rule for statements regarding marital relationships and that such testimony was not subject to a relaxed standard of admissibility. See id. at 401, 609 A.2d at 165. Finding that no hearsay exception applied, the Court ruled that admission of the statements had been error. See id. [5] See also Thornton, 494 Pa. at 264-65, 431 A.2d at 250-51 (reasoning that the victim's statement, that he was carrying a gun because he feared the appellant, was inadmissible under the state of mind exception because, to be probative of the appellant's intent, the statement had to be considered for its truth, and, thus considered, it was hearsay not within any exception). [6] In sum, this Court's decisional law concerning the state of mind exception is inconsistent. In my view, such inconsistency should be resolved by avoiding the expansion of the state of mind exception in the context of assertions by the victim concerning the status of his or her pre-existing relationship with the defendant. To do otherwise, as I have previously suggested, is to risk the traditional hearsay dangers of fabrication, faulty memory and incorrect narration[,] Fletcher, 561 Pa. at 304, 750 A.2d at 281 (Saylor, J., concurring), and, in addition, the possibility that the hearsay exception will consume the rule, see id. [7] Moreover, only a conservative interpretation of the state of mind exception, in my view, will comport with the understanding of the exception expressed in our recently adopted Rules of Evidence. [8] Specifically, Rule 803(3) (Then Existing Mental, Emotional, or Physical Condition) lifts the hearsay bar for: [a] statement of the declarant's then existing state of mind, emotion, sensation, or physical condition, such as intent, plan, motive, design, mental feeling, pain, and bodily health. A statement of memory or belief offered to prove the fact remembered or believed is included in this exception only if it relates to the execution, revocation, identification, or terms of declarant's will. Pa.R.E. 803(3). Because the assertions contained in the PFA application recite threats made by the defendant in the past, they are statements of memory, which, except in will contests, are inadmissible under Rule 803(3). Accordingly, I would find that the victim's statements were not admissible to establish Appellant's intent or motive (the purpose for which the trial court instructed the jury to consider them). I would find their admission harmless, however, as the jury learned of Appellant's prior threats against the victim through the testimony of various witnesses. Cf. Laich, ___ Pa. at ___, 777 A.2d at 1062 (rejecting harmless error analysis where, inter alia, the appellant's state of mind was at issue, and the challenged hearsay testimony was the only evidence of the appellant's prior threats to kill the victim). It is on this basis, therefore, that I join the majority's disposition of this issue.