Court Opinion

ID: 9860804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:33:01.309222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:26:43.154608
License: Public Domain

LONG, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.

I

On April 3,1995, while Maine State Trooper Vicki Gardner was writing him a summons, defendant Steven R. Fortin attacked and sexually assaulted her, strangling her into unconsciousness. In the process, he battered her face, broke her nose, bit her neck and breast and inflicted anal injuries. Those are the facts that the State seeks to elicit under N.J.R.E. 404(b) to establish Fortin’s identity as the murderer of Melissa Padilla in 1994. The majority today holds that, with a proper limiting instruction, such evidence can fairly be paraded before the jury that will try Fortin in this capital case. I respectfully disagree.
After it hears that evidence, which bears no unique signature to deflect a jury from its propensity use, it is inconceivable to me that a jury will be able to render an honest verdict as to whether *536Fortin killed Melissa Padilla. That is not because the jurors are not sober and conscientious, but because they are human and, realistically, will be unable to abide by a limiting instruction.
We recognized that state of affairs in State v. Brunson, 132 N.J. 377, 391, 625 A.2d 1085 (1993), where we harked back to the concern we enunciated in State v. Stevens, 115 N.J. 289, 304, 558 A.2d 833 (1989), that a limiting instruction “may not cure the prejudice inherent in other crimes evidence admitted under Rule [404(b) ].”1 Based upon substantial and compelling legal scholarship, we held in Brunson that, even with a limiting instruction, the most dedicated juror cannot be trusted to use a similar prior conviction solely for impeachment purposes. We thus declared that, in those cases in which a testifying defendant has previously been convicted of a crime that is the same or similar to the pending charge, the State may impeach defendant only by reference to the date and degree of the prior offense without identifying the crime. Id. at 391-92, 625 A.2d 1085.
To be sure, there are differences between N.J.R.E. 404(b) uses and impeachment uses. For instance, the probative value of the former is judged greater than that of the latter, and impeachment may occur with sanitization while most N.J.R.E. 404(b) uses cannot take place without some of the details of the prior crime being revealed. Nevertheless, the potential for juror misuse is the same regardless of context, and all the concerns we expressed about the inadequacy of jury instructions in Brunson (which we decided after State v. Cofield, 127 N.J. 328, 605 A.2d 230 (1992)) exist and remain unresolved in a N.J.R.E. 404(b) proceeding.
There is simply no warrant to conclude that jurors who are so incapable of following the court’s instructions in the impeachment context that the very name of the prior crime cannot be whispered in their presence, can use the particularly grotesque details of this crime solely for a limited N.J.R.E. 404(b) purpose.
*537That is not to suggest that evidence of every prior crime would so prejudice a defendant. For example, if testimony were adduced to show that a defendant’s motive for murder was to cover up an embezzlement, the court could effectively instruct the jury not to use the embezzlement as an indication that defendant was predisposed to homicide. The reason that such an instruction would be effective is that it would not be counterintuitive.
On the contrary, it is this particular crime (the details of which are necessary to any identity analysis and cannot be satisfactorily sanitized) that makes it impossible for an effective instruction to be crafted. Indeed, the import of any instruction would necessarily be that the jury should not use the fact that Fortin beat, strangled, bit and sodomized Trooper Gardner to conclude either that he is a bad person or that he is likely to do so again. The reason that instruction would be ineffective is obvious: it flies in the face of human experience.
When the jury hears what Fortin did to Trooper Gardner, there exists a substantial risk that it will be lured into declaring his guilt on grounds other than the State’s proof of each element of the New Jersey offense beyond a reasonable doubt; that it will punish Fortin for his “body of crime” as opposed to the murder of Melissa Padilla; or that it will convict him on a prophylactic basis — unsure of his guilt, but convinced that he is a danger to others based upon the Maine crime. In this capital murder ease, I would not take that risk.

II

It is well-established that N.J.R.E. 404(b) evidence should not be admitted where less inflammatory testimony is available on the issue. State v. Oliver, 133 N.J. 141, 151, 627 A.2d 144 (1993) (citing Stevens, supra, 115 N.J. at 301, 558 A.2d 833). Under that analysis, the details of Fortin’s crime in Maine should have been excluded because there was other, less prejudicial evidence to link Fortin to the New Jersey crime. That evidence included testimony by Fortin’s girlfriend that on the night of the murder, he *538returned home with scratches on his head, neck and chest; testimony that Fortin’s DNA was found on a cigarette butt near Melissa Padilla’s body; and, most importantly, expert testimony of Dr. Lowell Levine, a forensic odontologist, concluding that the bite mark on Melissa Padilla’s breast was made by Fortin and that the other bite marks on her body were consistent with Fortin’s dentition. Prosecutors bring cases based on that quantum of evidence every single day. If believed by a jury, it would justify the conclusion that Fortin was the person who killed Melissa Padilla.
Here, the trial court essentially held that because the jury “could” disregard the State’s expert and circumstantial evidence of identity, the highly inflammatory evidence of the Maine crime was admissible on that issue. Despite the deference that the judge is accorded, the fact that a jury might not be persuaded cannot possibly be the appropriate standard. If it were, it would open the door to the piling on of prejudicial and inflammatory other crimes evidence, contrary to Oliver and Stevens, in practically every case. Certainly, where, as here, there was non-inflammatory evidence sufficient to withstand a motion for judgment on the identity issue, there could be no legitimate reason to subject Fortin to the irremediable prejudice of the N.J.R.E. 404(b) evidence that clearly outweighed its probative value.

Ill

Separate and apart from my overall objection to the admission of this evidence because it will nullify the possibility of a fair trial, I also disagree with the majority to the extent that it has. concluded, as did the Appellate Division, that the Maine crime evidence is admissible in the absence of an expert.
There is a natural and inevitable tendency on the part of jurors to view proof of other crimes as justifying condemnation irrespective of the defendant’s guilt of the present charge. 1 Wigmore Evid. § 194 at 646 (2nd ed.1940). N.J.R.E. 404(b) recognizes that tendency by codifying New Jersey’s long-standing exclusion of *539prior crimes evidence to show predisposition, State v. Kociolek, 23 N.J. 400, 418-20, 129 A.2d 417 (1957), but allowing it to prove another fact in issue.
Because prior crimes evidence may simultaneously be highly probative and extremely prejudicial, State v. Stevens, supra, 115 N.J. at 300, 558 A.2d 833, a four-pronged test has been developed as a screen for the admission of such evidence. State v. Cofield, 127 N.J. 328, 338, 605 A.2d 230 (1992). To be admitted, the other crime must be relevant to a fact in issue; similar and temporally proximate; committed by defendant; and more probative than prejudicial. Ibid. Although Cofield generally declares a similarity requirement, similarity is not essential except where identity is at issue.2
Although the admission of all prior crimes evidence is somewhat problematic, similar prior crimes evidence that is offered for identity poses the greatest threat to a fair trial because of the enhanced hazard of misuse. State v. Reldan, 185 N.J.Super. 494, 501, 449 A.2d 1317 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 91 N.J. 543, 453 A.2d 862 (1982). There is thus a higher standard for its admission. United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1045-46 (5th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 847, 99 S.Ct. 147, 58 L.Ed.2d 149 (1978). Such prior crimes must not only be similar, but must have been committed by a novel or extraordinary means. Reldan, supra, 185 N.J.Super. at 502-03, 449 A.2d 1317. In other words, two separate elements of proof are required:
[P]erhaps the most incisive statement of the theory appears in an English decision, R. v. Morris. In that 1970 case, Widgerly L.J. delivered the judgment of the Court of Appeal. In his opinion, his Lordship stated that to invoke this theory, the prosecutor must show that the charged and uncharged crimes were committed by “one and the same man.” That expression connotes the two propositions the prosecutor must establish: (1) both crimes were committed with the “same” or strikingly similar methodology; and (2) the methodology is so unique that both crimes can be attributed to “one” criminal. The methodologies must resemble each other so closely that there is a reasonable deduction that the same person *540committed the two crimes. The methodology must be peculiar; the methodology must “set apart” the perpetrator. The inference must be the identity of the perpetrator of the two crimes rather than one criminal’s imitation of another criminal. The modus operandi must betray the defendant’s personal criminal identity.
[ 1 Edward J. Imwinkelried, Uncharged Misconduct Evidence 3:10, 3:12 (1999).]
Similarity and uniqueness are distinct prongs of an identity analysis. Evidence should not be admitted for identity if one of the prongs is lacking. The brute number of similarities does not establish uniqueness. Myers, supra, 550 F.2d at 1045; People v. Rivera, 41 Cal.3d 388, 221 Cal.Rptr. 562, 710 P.2d 362, 364 (1985); 22 C. Wright & K. Graham, Federal Practice & Procedure, Evid. § 5246 (1978). Uniqueness depends on whether the characteristics of the crime are sufficiently idiosyncratic to permit an inference of pattern for the purposes of proof. 2 Jack B. Weinstein & Margaret A. Berger, Weinstein’s Evidence ¶ 414[16] at 404-129-30 (1986).
The reason for the signature requirement is obvious: mere similarity only points to an interdicted use — predisposition. The unique signature is what upgrades the evidence and provides the jury with a basis to look beyond predisposition and fairly attribute both crimes to one criminal, thus establishing the valid N.J.R.E. 404(b) use of identity. Although rendering lip service to the duality of an identity analysis, the majority here has essentially collapsed the two prongs into one in ruling that an expert is permissible and not mandatory.
Even if a reasonable juror could conclude that the Maine and New Jersey crimes are similar based on the prosecutor’s laundry list of fifteen gross similarities 3 — the question of uniqueness is *541much more complicated. This is not a case where two crimes were committed wearing medieval knights’ helmets or masks of dead presidents. In such circumstances, a reasonable juror could easily parse out the uniqueness factor. Here, according to the prosecutor’s theory (and Hazelwood), the signature behavior is the distribution of the bites; the anal and facial injuries; and manual frontal strangulation. Without a proper expert’s opinion, there is simply no way for the jury to know what to make of these factors; more particularly, whether they are a handprint that sets Fortin apart as the perpetrator of both crimes, or whether they are merely meaningless permutations of most violent sex offenses.
Unlike similarity, as both the trial court and the Appellate Division held, this is not a matter within the ken of the ordinary juror. That that is so is underscored by the prosecutor’s proffer of an expert in the first place. That proffer would surely not have occurred if, for example, both perpetrators had dressed the victims in bizarre clothing or left an amaryllis at the scene. Those examples are obvious signatures. There is nothing obvious about this case. In the absence of an expert, a jury simply cannot know whether a unique handprint is present. Without that proof, the evidence lacks the enhanced probative value necessary for an identity use. Reldan, supra, 185 N.J.Super. at 502-03, 449 A.2d 1317; State v. Sempsey, 141 N.J.Super. 317, 323, 358 A.2d 212 (App.Div.1976), certif. denied, 74 N.J. 272, 377 A.2d 677 (1977). On that basis, I would reject that portion of the Appellate Division’s disposition admitting the Maine crime evidence in the absence of an expert.
That said, it is my view that the reliability defects that, according to the Appellate Division and the majority, preclude Hazel-*542wood from testifying as a scientific expert on linkage, are equally applicable to his proffer of uniqueness testimony. Linkage analysis is the procedure used by criminal investigators when the concentration of modus operandi and ritualistic characteristics in crimes is high, such that the investigator can conclude that the perpetrator is the same person. Uniqueness testimony is linkage analysis under another name. It is no more reliable when Hazel-wood testifies as a crime investigator than when he does so as an “expert” in ritualistic behavior. In sum, while I would not allow the evidence of the Maine crime to be admitted without an expert, I agree with the Appellate Division that Hazelwood does not qualify.

IV

I would reverse the determination of the Appellate Division that the details of the Maine crime are admissible under N.J.R.E. 404(b). Because the majority has determined that that evidence can be admitted, I would hold that an expert is necessary to establish uniqueness. I would affirm the Appellate Division’s conclusion that Hazelwood does not qualify as such an expert.
For affirmance and remandment — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices O’HERN, GARIBALDI, STEIN, COLEMAN and VERNIERO — 6.
Concurring in part, dissenting in part — Justice LONG — 1.

 Former Rule 55.

 Many common scheme and plan cases will also involve similarity. State v. Carswell, 303 N.J.Super. 462, 470-71, 697 A.2d 171 (App.Div.1997).

 Even the similarity prong is problematic as the Appellate Division noted:
Here there is an attempt to link behavior in two crimes under circumstances where there are as many differences as there are similarities, starting with the fact defendant was not charged with the attempted murder of Trooper Gardner. There are differences in the age, race, weight and height of the victims. There is a significant difference in the status of each victim. Trooper Gardner is a professional police officer and a potentially dangerous *541target for someone to perpetrate a crime against,particularly when defendant knew, prior to the assault, that his identity was made known to the state police dispatcher by Trooper Gardner. There are also differences in the type of assault. Trooper Gardner was anally and vaginally assaulted, while Padilla was assaulted anally, but not vaginally.
[Fortin, supra, 318 N.J.Super. at 577, 724 A.2d 818.]