Court Opinion

ID: 9564723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:05:53.424425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:38.242895
License: Public Domain

GOLDEN, Justice,
specially concurring.
I concur in those parts of the majority opinion treating the sufficiency of evidence issues relating to possession with intent to deliver marihuana and conspiracy to deliver controlled substances. With respect to the issue concerning the admission of the cocon-spirators’ guilty pleas, I concur in the result reached, viz., plain error does not exist, but differ from the majority’s reasoning. I do not find that Kwallek v. State, 596 P.2d 1372 (Wyo.1979), requires us to hold here that a clear and unequivocal rule of law was violated because the prosecution used the co-conspirators’ convictions on direct examination in the State’s case-in-chief and briefly on summation and the trial court did not give sua sponte a limiting instruction under W.R.E. 105.
The prosecution’s use of the information was for a proper evidentiary purpose, viz., to lessen the sting of the defense’s cross-examination trying to discredit these witnesses. See Gentry v. State, 806 P.2d 1269 (Wyo.1991); United States v. Sanders, 893 F.2d 133, 136 (7th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 496 U.S. 907, 110 S.Ct. 2591, 110 L.Ed.2d 272 (1990) and cases cited therein; and United States v. Davis, 838 F.2d 909, 917 (7th Cir.1988) and cases cited therein.
W.R.E. 105 provides that upon request the trial court shall restrict evidence to its proper purpose and instruct the jury accordingly when evidence is admissible for one purpose but not another. Here, the witnesses’ convictions were evidence admissible for the proper purpose of credibility but not for the improper purpose of inferring Urru-tia’s guflt. In Connolly v. State, 610 P.2d 1008 (Wyo.1980), and Sybert v. State, 724 *971P.2d 463 (Wyo.1986), we held that the trial court did not commit plain error when it did not give a limiting instruction in the absence of a party’s request. In situations such as those presented here, I think our rule would be, absent timely objection and request for a cautionary or limiting instruction, plain error will be considered only in rare instances in which egregious aggravating circumstances exist. They do not exist here.