Court Opinion

ID: 9563837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:48:03.433395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:05.621190
License: Public Domain

LOHR, Justice,
dissenting:
The majority acknowledges that the trial court erred in admitting several pieces of evidence at the trial of the defendant, Robert Williams, but concludes that the errors were harmless. Because of the highly prejudicial nature of some of this evidence, however, I cannot agree that Williams received a fair trial in spite of the admission of the evidence. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Williams and two other persons, Valerie Shaughnessy and Steven Lloyd, were charged with first degree murder and Conspiracy to commit murder as the result of the death of a victim by stabbing. Lloyd testified at Williams’ trial as a result of a plea bargain in his own case. Williams also testified, offering his version of the events resulting in the victim’s death. Williams’ testimony was that in a fit of anger Shaughnessy began stabbing the victim, that Williams and Lloyd tried to restrain her, and that Lloyd later also stabbed the victim. The evidence also contained a bewildering assortment of statements by each of the three persons charged describing several different and contradictory versions of the killing and the events that led to it. If Williams’ testimony at trial was true, he was blameless. If the most damaging statement of Lloyd was true, Williams not only actively participated in the stabbing but planned the killing in advance. Thus, the credibility of the witnesses Williams and Lloyd was of critical importance at the trial. It is against this background that the majority concludes that the receipt of admittedly inadmissible evidence portraying Williams as a person with an extensive background of serious and reprehensible criminal activity, and also corroborating the testimony of Lloyd, was harmless. I cannot agree.
The first item of the evidence with which Williams takes issue is the People’s exhibit KK, a letter to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation written by Steven Lloyd. Lloyd wrote the letter shortly after being questioned by two CBI agents on November 18, 1980. In the letter, Lloyd expressed his desire to “clear this whole situation up,” and he purported to describe the events that occurred on the night that the victim was killed. The letter was admitted into evidence over proper objection during the direct examination of Lloyd. The majority acknowledges that the letter was inadmissible hearsay since it does not qualify as a prior consistent statement that was offered to rebut an express or implied charge of recent fabrication against Lloyd. Majority op. at 1282; see CRE 801(d)(1)(B). However, the majority determines that the admission of the letter was not prejudicial to Williams and therefore was harmless error. Majority op. at 1282-83; see Crim.P. 52(a).
In my view, the letter was prejudicial to the defendant in two respects. First, the letter essentially corroborated the testimony given by Lloyd at trial. This corroborative aspect of the letter takes on great significance in a case, like the present one, in which the credibility of the witnesses can be dispositive. Williams testified that there was no plan to kill the victim, that Valerie Shaughnessy attacked the victim first, and that Lloyd then stabbed the victim to death. Lloyd, on the other hand, testified that Williams devised a plan to kill the victim, that Shaughnessy attacked first, and that Williams then stabbed the victim to ensure that he died. The letter, as evidence supporting Lloyd’s version of *1287the facts, could have encouraged the jury to believe Lloyd rather than Williams.
Furthermore, the letter contained a highly prejudicial reference to past criminal activity on the part of Williams. Lloyd wrote:
When we first met, Bob [Williams] told me of an incident in Phoenix of how he finished a black guy who he, Bob, thought had burned down his house there. I don’t [sic] how true this is, it’s probably bullshit, but while standing there watching him stab [the victim] I did think and I figured, for my life, that I better go along with anything he wanted.
Evidence of prior criminality is never admissible to show the propensity of a defendant to commit a crime. People v. Honey, 198 Colo. 64, 67 n. 2, 596 P.2d 751, 754 n. 2 (1979); see also Callis v. People, 692 P.2d 1045 (Colo.1984); People v. Lucero, 200 Colo. 335, 615 P.2d 660 (1980); CRE 404(b). Such evidence is generally excluded in part to “guard against the likelihood that evidence of prior criminality having little bearing on the issue of guilt would assume undue proportion in the minds of the jurors with resulting prejudice to the accused.” Callis v. People, 692 P.2d at 1051. The reference to a prior murder by the defendant has obvious potential for prejudice, but no conceivable relevance to the crime that is the subject of the present case. Given the prejudicial nature of exhibit KK, I cannot conclude that its erroneous admission was harmless.
After the CBI agents received Lloyd’s letter, they interviewed him for several hours. The interview was recorded on tape and transcribed, and the transcript of the interview, exhibit NN, was admitted at trial during redirect examination of Lloyd. The transcript, which is fifty-five pages long, is another statement of Lloyd’s version of the facts. In addition, it contains a multitude of references to drug-dealing and other criminal acts on the part of Williams having no relation to the crimes with which he was charged.
Williams argues that the trial court should have excised certain prejudicial, irrelevant portions of the transcript before admitting it, relying on People v. DelGuidice, 199 Colo. 41, 606 P.2d 840 (1979). As the majority points out, however, Williams failed to request that the transcript be edited at trial, and therefore, his objection to the admission of the unedited transcript must be reviewed under a plain error standard. In other words, reversal on the basis of exhibit NN is justified only if there is at least a reasonable possibility that the admission of the transcript in its entirety contributed to Williams’ conviction. People v. Mills, 192 Colo. 260, 263, 557 P.2d 1192, 1194 (1976). My review of the transcript persuades me that it presented a grave possibility of prejudice to the defendant.
The transcript contains many references to drug transactions that were unrelated to the crime with which Williams was charged and several references to other unrelated criminal activities not involving drugs. For example, in answer to an agent’s question about the existence of a plan to kill the victim, Lloyd provided the following unresponsive, prejudicial comments:
[Williams] had a lot of the neighbor kids come around his house with hot items that they were jockey boxing out of cars and houses. And some little neighbor kid came around with a 22 caliber lugar [sic] or something and he was interested in buying it.
The agent, apparently recognizing that this information had no apparent connection with this case, prompted Lloyd to “get back to” his questions.
The remaining objectionable portions of the transcript concerned drug transactions in which Williams participated after the killing of the victim. Lloyd stated several times that shortly after Lloyd, Williams and Shaughnessy returned to Williams’ house from the scene of the crime, “numerous” people called and “three to four people showed up” wanting to purchase quaa-ludes from Williams. He also stated that in the period following the victim’s death and preceding Williams’ move to Phoenix, Williams “had upped his dealing practice *1288not with the old people that we knew but with new people. Kids, high schoolers, people who just walk up to the door. ...” Lloyd asserted that he “really didn’t like to be around Bob that much anymore because of all the little kids he was having running in and out of there.... ” Additionally, Lloyd told the agents that Williams had instructed Shaughnessy “to score 1500 hits of acid, one ounce of cocaine and five pounds of reefer to take to Phoenix with her,” that Shaughnessy and Williams mailed some acid to the house of the person with whom they were staying in Phoenix, and that Williams told Lloyd that he was going to start “making a run” between Denver and Phoenix every two weeks.
The majority concludes that the admission of exhibit NN in its unedited form was not so prejudicial as to constitute plain error because some of the statements in the transcript were arguably relevant to show the crime and subsequent cover-up in context. Majority op. at 1283. It is true that we have allowed the admission of evidence of “all the facts which are necessary to prove the crime charged in the information, when linked to the chain of events which supports that crime, ... even though the evidence shows the commission of other crimes not presented in the information.” People v. Anderson, 184 Colo. 32, 36, 518 P.2d 828, 830 (1974) (emphasis in original); accord Hudson v. People, 196 Colo. 211, 215, 585 P.2d 580, 582 (1978). Moreover, we have allowed evidence of other offenses by the defendant “when they are so interwoven with the principal transaction that it is necessary to show them in order to give true understanding to the offense charged.” Johnson v. People, 174 Colo. 413, 416-17, 484 P.2d 110, 111 (1971); see also People v. Geller, 189 Colo. 338, 341, 540 P.2d 334, 336 (1975) (“evidence of the conversations and transactions, far from being wholly independent of the crime charged, were ‘an integral part and parcel of the total picture’ which surrounded” the crime charged) (quoting Wooley v. People, 148 Colo. 392, 367 P.2d 903 (1961)).
The objectionable statements in the transcript, however, do not concern incidents that are “linked to the chain of events” that supported the crime or the cover-up, nor are they “interwoven” with those crimes. The drug-related incidents described in the transcript occurred after the killing of the victim, making it difficult to link them with that crime. Although these incidents did occur during the period of the alleged cover-up, they have nothing to do with the substance of that cover-up, which supposedly consisted of attempts by Williams, Shaughnessy and Lloyd to produce an alibi for the night of the killing. Furthermore, it is virtually impossible to find a relevant connection between the killing or the cover-up and the statements about Williams buying “hot items” from children.
Finally, the majority determines that the admission of exhibit NN did not constitute plain error because of the great amount of other evidence of Williams’ drug-related conduct that was admitted at trial. It is true that evidence of Williams’ drug-related activities can be found throughout the record, but we cannot know what effect the substantial additional, inadmissible evidence had in the jurors’ minds. I do not believe that this court can properly conclude that the jury was not influenced by this prejudicial evidence. I would hold that the references to unrelated crimes by Williams found in exhibits KK and NN adversely affected Williams’ substantial rights and deprived him of a fair trial.1 I would therefore reverse and remand for a new trial.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice QUINN and Justice DUBOFSKY join in this dissent.

. The majority also acknowledges that the trial court erred in admitting hearsay statements by Shaughnessy but holds this error harmless as well. Majority op. at 1284-88. I do not address the harmfulness of this error since I believe the effect of the errors involving the admission of exhibits KK and NN, independently and in combination, is more than sufficient to compel reversal.