Court Opinion

ID: 9632696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:22:00.774639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:58:39.649630
License: Public Domain

LIMBAUGH, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
For the most part, I agree with the majority’s determination that certain evidence should have been excluded. In particular, I agree that the seedy, pornographic evidence of defendant’s sexual proclivities was more prejudicial than probative and for that reason was inadmissible, at least in the guilt phase.
My only disagreement regarding evidence that should have been excluded pertains to certain testimony by Ms. Niswon-ger, the mother of one of the victims. Defendant had told Ms. Niswonger after an altercation between them that “he was going to go and get [her] son and take him to the woods and kill him.” This threat, although directed to Ms. Niswonger’s son, is some' evidence of defendant’s motive to murder Ms. Niswonger’s daughter. It gives rise to a reasonable inference that he murdered the daughter in part because he was angry with Ms. Niswonger and wanted to get back at her. Evidence of uncharged misconduct to establish motive is a well-recognized exception to the general rule. State v. Roberts, 948 S.W.2d 577, 591 (Mo. banc 1997). This exception, like the other major exceptions (intent, absence of mistake or accident, common scheme, and identity) is based on the recognition that the probative value of this category of evidence presumptively outweighs the prejudicial effect. Id. Although the prejudicial effect of the evidence must still be considered to determine if the presumption is overcome, in this case, the presumption should hold. Defendant’s threat, in the larger sense, was that he would kill one of Ms. Niswonger’s children in order to punish Ms. Niswonger, herself. The fact that he carried out his threat, albeit on a different family member, is proof that the probative value measured up to the prejudicial effect. Furthermore, in a very real sense, the threat is not propensity evidence at all, but a threat to commit the crime that was actually consummated.
In general, our appellate review on this and all evidentiary issues is limited to the determination of whether the trial court abused its discretion. State v. Wolfe, 13 S.W.3d 248, 258 (Mo. banc 2000). In that regard, the majority fails to give due deference to the trial court’s weighing of pro*154bative value versus prejudicial effect. Of more concern is the fact that defendant did not properly object to the admission of this purported propensity evidence so that the applicable standard of review is not abuse of discretion, but plain error giving rise to manifest injustice. Rule 84.13(c). Regrettably, the majority pays no heed to these standards. I would hold that the admission of defendant’s threat was not error, much less plain error.
Turning to the issue of defendant’s sexual proclivities, I would hold that the fact that the prejudicial effect of the evidence outweighed its probative value did not constitute outcome-determinative prejudice requiring reversal, because the properly admitted evidence of guilt was overwhelming. As this Court explained in Roberts, in addressing the improper admission of uncharged misconduct: “This outcome-determinative prejudice is different from the prejudice a trial court considers when it weighs the probative value of a piece of evidence against its potential for prejudice. This latter prejudice is evidence-specific.” Roberts, 948 S.W.2d at 592.
I am confused by the majority’s discussion of the standards to be used in determining whether improper admission of the evidence is reversible error. The opinion states: “[T]he question is ... whether the prejudice resulting from improper admission of evidence is outcome-determinative, requiring reversal. Put another way, the question is whether the evidence had an effect on the jury’s deliberations to the point that it contributed to the result reached.” These two sentences are patently inconsistent. The first provides, according to the majority’s citation to State v. Roberts earlier in the opinion, that reversal is required if the jury would not have found the defendant guilty “but for the erroneously admitted evidence.” The second provides, without any citation to authority, that reversal is required if the erroneously admitted evidence contributed to the verdict of guilt. Evidence that merely contributed to the verdict is not necessarily outcome-determinative, so I do not understand how the two sentences are equated. Furthermore, the standard that reversal is required when inadmissible evidence “contributed to the result reached,” combined with the fact that all the evidence supporting the verdict contributes to the result reached, leads to the rather absurd consequence that reversal is required in every case.
Despite my confusion, I assume that the majority is not attempting to transform the standard of review for prejudicial error and that this Court still abides by the outcome-determinative standard. But, even then, there is still some concern. In response to the state’s recitation of the long-held premise that even if harmful error resulted from the improper admission of evidence, the evidence of guilt may be so overwhelming that the conviction must be affirmed, the majority states, “[t]his Court declines to utilize so narrow a test.” The majority then holds that the test to be used “is whether the prejudicial improper admission was outcome-determinative,” as if the test was hopelessly in conflict with the state’s reference to overwhelming evidence. To say that the evidence of guilt was so overwhelming that other evidence improperly admitted does not require reversal is simply to say that the evidence improperly admitted was not so prejudicial that it was outcome-determinative. Consideration of overwhelming evidence of guilt is simply a logical application of the outcome-determinative test. It is admissible evidence that precludes the inadmissible evidence from being outcome-determinative. Though the majority asserts that overwhelming evidence of guilt should not be the controlling element of the outcome-determinative standard, State v. Roberts, the case on which the majority repeatedly relies, supports the opposite conclusion. Roberts held that the erroneous admission of defendant’s uncharged misconduct resulted only in “evidence-specific prejudice, not outcome-determinative prejudice” and *155that defendant’s guilt “is essentially uncon-troverted and overwhelming.” Id.
Using the analysis outlined in Roberts, I submit that the prejudice in admitting evidence of defendant’s sexual proclivities was evidence-specific and not outcome-determinative. It was not outcome-determinative because it cannot fairly be said that the jury would have reached a different conclusion “but for the erroneously admitted evidence.” The jury would not have reached a different conclusion because the properly admitted evidence of guilt was overwhelming. The list of 15 factors taken from the state’s brief proves the point:
1. Appellant’s confession that he murdered the Sisks;
2. Evidence directly corroborating factual details in appellant’s confession, including the bank teller who cashed a check for a man in the company of Candy Sisk and driving a car identical in make, model and color to that driven by appellant, and the partially filled-out check found at the murder scene;
3. Appellant’s statement that his motive for going to the Sisks’ residence was to take money, corroborated by the evidence above and by the fact that the victims’ purses had been ransacked;
4. Evidence suggesting that animus against Shirley Niswonger, Candy’s mother, may have been a possible motive for murdering the Sisks, including the fact that Niswonger had told appellant several months before the murder that she wanted to break up with appellant and the fact that appellant had previously threatened the life of Niswonger’s children and
5. The fact that appellant had made repeated attempts to visit the Sisks the day before the murder, and his statement to Samantha Simmons that he was going there to get money from “the girl” at the Sisk residence;
6. The fact that a car fitting the description of the one driven by appellant was seen driving slowly in front of the Sisk residence less than three hours before the victims’ bodies were discovered;
7. The fact that the man who came to the Sisk house a short time later told Irene Sisk that he had “a Christmas gift for Candy from her mother in jail,” given that appellant was acquainted with Candy and had personal knowledge that her mother was incarcerated;
8. The fact that this man drove a car of the same make, model and color as that driven by appellant;
9. The presence of a number of blood spots and traces on the automobile that had been driven by appellant and that was found at appellant’s residence, and the fact that one of these blood samples was matched by DNA analysis with the blood of Irene Sisk;
10. The fact that a microscopic analysis of the numerous ropes found at appellant’s residence established that two of them were consistent in color, composition and construction with the ropes that had been used to bind the victims;
11. The fact that a complex knot used to bind the murder victims was similar to the one tied by appellant on a previous occasion;
12. The discovery of notes in appellant’s room listing the name “Candace,” giving directions to the Sisk house, and describing preparations to be made for entry, including a gun, handcuffs and a rope, corroborated by appellant’s possession of handcuffs and rope and the use of rope to bind the victims;
13. The fact that appellant told a friend the day before the murder that he had no money, contrasted with his multiple expenditures beginning only a few hours after the killings;
14. Appellant’s display of a consciousness of guilt by checking into a motel, instead of going to his home in the same city, a short time after the murders, and his telling of multiple inconsistent stories when questioned by police;
15. Appellant’s possession or disposition shortly after the murders of numerous items that were consistent with having been fruits or instrumentalities of the *156crime, including a VCR, telephones, a videotape of “Independence Day,” [and ropes].
In a footnote, the majority unfairly discounts this evidence in an attempt to show that it was not overwhelming. Although there was controversy over the blood evidence at trial, defendant did not renew the controversy on appeal, which is a tacit concession that the evidence was relevant, that it was based on established scientific principles, and that it was otherwise admissible. Defendant’s so-called challenge to the voluntariness and validity of his confession is even more spurious. The extensive trial testimony by the officers who interviewed defendant was uncontro-verted. Defendant did not take the witness stand, and defense counsel’s questions on cross-examination of the officers attempting to suggest that the confession was involuntary or invalid were all refuted. In addition, the majority’s observation that the confession “contained very little detail and was not videotaped” was of so little consequence that not even the defendant, himself, raised the point on this appeal. On the next point, the majority fails to identify the evidence of guilt from the above list that supposedly should not have been admitted, other than the uncharged misconduct evidence, and I have found none. There is also the assertion that much of the other evidence of guilt “is consistent with [his] defense that he visited the victims, went to the bank with them, borrowed money from them, and then left without harming them.” Suffice it to say that this evidence is far more inculpatory than exculpatory. In sum, these points do not alter my belief that the evidence of guilt was overwhelming and that the prejudice caused by admission of the evidence of uncharged misconduct was not outcome-determinative.
The penalty phase is a completely different matter. “Other crimes” evidence, or evidence of a defendant’s prior uncharged misconduct, and all other evidence pertaining to a defendant’s character is admissible in penalty phase. State v. Kreutzer, 928 S.W.2d 854, 874 (Mo. banc 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1083, 117 S.Ct. 752, 136 L.Ed.2d 689 (1997). Evidence of a defendant’s extreme sexual proclivities or sexual perversion, which some would say is not necessarily a character flaw if engaged in through consensual relations, is most certainly a character flaw when coupled with other evidence showing that the perversion can manifest in criminal behavior. In this case, the evidence of defendant’s character flaw of sexual perversion should have been admissible in penalty phase because it manifested in the criminal conduct of binding and anally sodomizing one of the victims in the course of the murder. Indeed, admission of the evidence is all the more appropriate because the binding and anally sodomizing of one of the victims was one of the aggravating circumstances of the murder — that the murder was “outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman.” To reiterate, evidence of such a high degree of sexual perversion that it manifests in criminal behavior is evidence of the defendant’s bad character of which the jury should be apprised in making the sentencing determination.
For these reasons, I would affirm the judgment of conviction and sentence.