Court Opinion

ID: 9682095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:05:17.559166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:37.437111
License: Public Domain

*863STEPHENS, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority contends that the evidence of an alleged forcible rape eight years earlier, for which appellant was neither charged nor convicted, was admissible to show intent, motive or a common plan, and was not too remote in time to be relevant to the instant prosecution. I disagree. As we held in O’Bryan v. Commonwealth, Ky., 634 S.W.2d 153, 156 (1982), “[a]n accused is entitled to be tried for one offense at a time, and evidence must be confined to that offense.” There are only a few very limited instances where the prior unconvict-ed acts of a defendant may be used against him or her in a prosecution for an entirely separate crime. The three main categories are (1) when the evidence “is offered to prove motive, intent, knowledge, identity, plan or scheme, or absence of mistake or accident; (2) such evidence is relevant to the issues other than proof of a general criminal disposition, and (3) the possibility of prejudice to the accused is outweighed by the probative worth and need for the evidence.” Id.
Each of these specific exceptions is subject to a fourth restriction — time. As time passes, the relevance of evidence of prior unconvicted acts greatly decreases. Such remote evidence may only be admitted when the prior alleged activity indicates “a common and continuing pattern of conduct on the part of the accused.” Pendleton v. Commonwealth, Ky., 685 S.W.2d 549, 552 (1985). In Pendleton, the appellant was convicted of the first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy of his six-year-old daughter. At trial, evidence was introduced that he had abused the victim’s fourteen-year-old sister over a period of six or seven years. We affirmed the trial court’s admission of this testimony, although it was rather remote in time from the charged offense, because it was relevant to show a continuing pattern of sexual abuse against his daughters. It was not merely an isolated incident which occurred a long time ago and bespoke a tendency towards such behavior, but rather the first in a series of sexual assaults, culminating in the rape and sodomy of the victim.
In the case at bar, there is no such pattern continuing over the years. Appellant was convicted of fondling a number of young boys during a fairly short period of time. The testimony of K.R., alleging that eight years earlier appellant had raped him is neither recent enough, nor sufficiently similar to the charged offenses to render the evidence relevant to prove appellant’s guilt. The victims all testified that they were able to refuse appellant’s advances, and a few in fact did. There is a great deal of difference between these offenses and an alleged violent, forcible rape.
It is very important to preserve that inalienable right of every criminal defendant to be presumed innocent until the state can prove his or her guilt. An effective protection against prejudgment is the prohibition against using a defendant’s rumored bad propensities against him or her. Exclusion of a defendant’s alleged past misdeeds enables each accused to face the charges against him or her with a fresh slate. For these reasons, the law does not allow a witness to testify as to unconvicted bad acts which occurred long before the charged offense unless it is necessary to prove one of the few specific exceptions.
For these reasons, I dissent from the opinion of the majority because I do not believe the rape of K.R. is either recent enough or sufficiently similar to the fon-dlings for which appellant was convicted to be relevant at this trial, and should have been accordingly excluded.
STEPHENSON, J., joins in this dissent.