Court Opinion

ID: 9750527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:05:02.523875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:11.838264
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with Judge Johnson that the “motive” of the victim of a crime is not properly a basis for creating a new exception to the general rule that evidence of prior criminal conduct of a defendant is inadmissible. However, I do not understand that Judge Cirillo has attempted to create such an exception in his opinion. Therefore, I join Judge Cirillo’s opinion. Evidence that the victim was told that defendant had attempted to rape the victim’s wife was admissible because it was part of the history of the event on trial, a part of the natural development of the facts. That the victim had been told of the attempted rape of his wife was essential to the jury’s understanding of the circumstances surrounding his going to the defendant’s home and of his subsequent death. Even Judge Johnson, in his well-written dissent, finds it necessary, in order to draw a complete picture of the circumstances surrounding this shooting, to recite the reason why Joyce was at the defendant’s home at the time when he was shot. The trial court did not err in receiving this evidence to show the history of the event on trial.