Court Opinion

ID: 9858395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:21:26.741847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:07.047591
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The Advisory Committee’s Note under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), from whence the identical SDCL 19-12-5 is drawn, contains this illuminating passage: “The determination must be made whether the danger of undue prejudice outweighs the probative value of the evidence in view of the availability of other means of proof and other factors appropriate for making decisions of this kind under Rule 403.” (Emphasis supplied.) As revealed in the facts herein, several other means of proof were clearly available and employed in the trial below. It was unnecessary for the State to overreach and use remote-in-time, factual circumstances which the majority concludes to be “mysterious.” In State v. Houghton, 272 N.W.2d 788, 793 (S.D.1978), we affirmed an exclusion of pri- or wrongs evidence, holding in part: “Thus the state should proceed to present the considerable evidence available in the present case without attempting to inject prejudicial testimony of other activities of defendant.”
The Advisory Committee’s Note also cites Slough & Knightly, Other Vices, Other Crimes, 41 Iowa L.Rev. 325 (1956), which begins with the fundamental premise:
Strongly entrenched among many American traditions is the concept that man should not be judged strenuously by reference to the awesome spectre of his past life. When one faces trial for a specific crime, he should not be held to answer for the scandal that his earlier vices would most certainly produce. Though he has committed many crimes under circumstances which would increase the probability that he has committed the crime charged, it remains an unalterable fact that members of the jury, of nobler root, will lend excessive weight to a record of crime.
Slough & Knightly conclude their article by reflecting on the value of rules such as SDCL 19-12-5:
In attempting to construct a program of justice, authors of the common law and *117their adherents have fashioned a set of rules by which mortal men might better judge the misdeeds of their contemporaries.... Imbedded in these very principles is the constitutional concept that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty [see State v. Holmes, 338 N.W.2d 104,105 (S.D.1983) (Henderson, J., dissenting)], and closely allied is the premise that man should not be judged in light of the abominations of his past. [See State v. Iron Shell, 336 N.W.2d 372, 375 (S.D.1983) (Henderson, J., dissenting).] Such thoughts are good, clean judicial thoughts, spun in an atmosphere detached from the spontaneity of courtroom decision.
Id. at 349.
As we held in Houghton, a finding that prior wrongs are relevant is but one step in the analysis of admissibility: “[T]he trial judge should, in an exercise of sound discretion, exclude evidence tending to show the commission of other crimes ‘where the minute peg of relevancy will be entirely obscured by the dirty linen hung upon it.’ ” State v. Houghton, 272 N.W.2d at 791, n. 11 (quoting United States v. Kahaner, 317 F.2d 459 (2nd Cir.1963), cert. denied, 375 U.S. 836, 84 S.Ct. 74, 11 L.Ed.2d 65 (1963)). The prejudicial taint that must be zealously guarded against in considering prior wrongs is that: (1) the jury might convict a person simply because they perceive him as a bad person who committed prior unpunished crimes; and (2) the jury might infer that the commission of one bad act indicates a propensity to commit the bad act in question. See Comment, Other Crimes Evidence at Trial: Of Balancing and Other Matters, 70 Yale L.J. 763 (1961).
One of the critical safeguards against prejudice infused into SDCL 19-12-5 via our case law is that the prior incidents must be close in time rather than remote. State v. Johnson, 316 N.W.2d 652 (S.D.1982).1 In State v. Pedde, 334 N.W.2d 41 (S.D.1983), we further clarified this closeness-in-time factor to mean not only that the' prior incidents be close in time to each other, but that they be close in time to the charged offense at bar.2 See also, United States v. Two Eagle, 633 F.2d 93, 96 (8th Cir.1980) (for federal law requiring the same concept of closeness). See generally, Garcia v. Aetna Cas. & Surety Co., 657 F.2d 652 (5th Cir.1981) (reversing a trial court’s admission of a prio%fire into evidence); Smith v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 633 F.2d 401 (5th Cir.1980) (employing closeness-in-time analysis in an arson setting). Here, the prior fires occurred in 1973, 1976, and 1977, while the fire at bar occurred in 1981. Suffice it to say, a factual fire setting eight years, five years, and four years, eight months prior to this fire, is not close in time to the offense charged at bar. It must be emphasized that appellant has never admitted to nor been charged with setting any of the prior three fires. The State admits in its brief that the cause of the Sioux City, Nebraska fire was undetermined. Hence, the trial court’s ruling was not only erroneous and prejudicial to receive the Nebraska fire into evidence, but was a reckless disregard for the rules of evidence and precedent thereunder. This dissenting expression follows the general rule in the United States and not the minority rule as espoused by the majority opinion. See An-not., 87 A.L.R.2d 891 (1963).
Several cases hold that evidence of prior fires is generally inadmissible in arson cases:
(1) In People v. Miller, 13 Ill.Dec. 128, 55 Ill.App.3d 421, 370 N.E.2d 1155 (1977), the Illinois Court limited two prior Illinois decisions which held that evidence of “other” fires could be introduced to show that all of the fires were committed as part of a connected scheme or purpose. The Miller Court held that the prior fires must have a close connection, namely they must occur “at or about the same time and in the same immediate area as did the arson for which defendant was charged.” Miller, 370 *118N.E.2d at 1159. The Miller Court went on to hold:
[T]he fires occurred independently of each other, on different dates and at different locations. Therefore, the mere fact that this is an arson case will neither suspend the general rule barring the introduction into evidence of other crimes, nor dispense with the foundation which must be laid before an exception to that rule can be made.3
Miller, 370 N.E.2d at 1160;
(2) In People v. Vincek, 75 A.D.2d 412, 429 N.Y.S.2d 928 (1980), defendant’s residence had burned four years earlier in 1974. The 1974 fire started behind the freezer and occurred right after defendant’s wife left him. A 1978 fire in defendant’s residence started behind the refrigerator and defendant’s wife had once again just left him. The New York Court ruled that admitting evidence of the 1974 fire was reversible error because “in a prosecution for arson, evidence proving or tending to prove a prior arson is not admissible unless it is shown to be directly probative of the crime charged ....” Vincek, 429 N.Y.S.2d at 931. The New York Court ruled that this evidence was highly prejudicial because it could not be demonstrated that the prior fire “was intentionally set by or at the instance of the defendant .... ” Vincek, 429 N.Y.S.2d at 930;
(3) In Allen v. State, 560 P.2d 1030, 1033 (Okla.Cr.App.1977), the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals stated: “The general rule is that evidence of other fires is inadmissible under a charge of arson.”;
(4) In Moreland v. State, 373 So.2d 1259 (Ala.Cr.App.1979), a fire occurred in defendant’s residence at 5:08 a.m. on September 16,1978. A fire inspector testified that this early morning fire was arson. Later the same day at 9:35 p.m., another fire occurred in a different room at defendant’s residence.4 Fire officials also called this fire arson. Defendant was tried for the morning fire and evidence of the evening fire was introduced. The Alabama Court reversed defendant’s conviction holding the evening fire was inadmissible because evidence was unavailable to show it was defendant who committed the second arson;
(5) In State v. Pitts, 30 Or.App. 1, 566 P.2d 182 (1977), the Oregon Court reversed an arson conviction upon the following fact pattern: (a) after defendant and his landlord argued, defendant, in frustration, started several grass fires; and (b) after a later argument between defendant and his landlord, the landlord’s garage was burned. The Court held the probative value of the grass fire evidence was quite low compared to the high danger of undue prejudice. The Court also noted that the prior fires evidence was barred by “the general rule that evidence that a person has engaged in certain conduct is not admissible to prove that he engaged in similar conduct at another time.” Pitts, 566 P.2d at 183;
(6) In State v. Lynch, 279 N.C. 1, 181 S.E.2d 561 (1971), the North Carolina Court ordered a new trial where evidence of defendant’s involvement of other fires was allowed. The Court held that the prior fires were highly prejudicial and irrelevant to the fire for which defendant was charged.
The majority opinion allows the use of “mysterious” fires to convict a man. When, in the course of this Nation’s history, did the law start to convict people on mysterious circumstances? Our rules of evidence evolved to prohibit unreliable, unprobative prejudicial facts from going into evidence. You cannot throw in an evidentiary kitchen sink to convict someone. Where will the boundless, amorphous majority rule end? The State possessed a plethora of probative evidence to place before the jury; yet, in a classic case of prosecutorial overkill, the State successfully painted appellant as a firebug. Mystery, as a basis of proof, is not *119very far removed from rumor and scandal. People should not be convicted by rumor, scandal, blabber, mystery, and suspicion. We must not degrade our standards of proof simply because this is an arson case. I cannot agree that suspicion of appellant’s association with three prior fires springboards a legitimate acceptance of this evidence before the jury. It is, in effect, guilt by association. Thus, I would hold the limited probative value of the prior fires is outweighed by the formidable prejudicial effect of this evidence. The trial court abused its discretion by allowing the prior fires into evidence at trial.
I would reverse and remand with directions that appellant be granted a new trial for he did not receive a fair trial below.

. In Johnson, 316 N.W.2d 652, the prior crimes took place within a few months of each other.

. In Pedde, 334 N.W.2d 41, the prior crime occurred within one month before the crime at bar.

. Likewise, SDCL 19-12-5 does not single out arson cases for special relaxed evidentiary treatment as does the majority opinion.

. This pattern is directly contrary to the majority opinion’s unsupported assumption that arsonists must wait several years between each fire.