Court Opinion

ID: 9632942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:28:44.484665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:24.809283
License: Public Domain

STERNBERG, Judge,
specially concurring.
I agree that this conviction should be affirmed, but am not persuaded by the majority's attempt to harmonize the affirmance here with the reversal in People v. Casper, Colo.App., 620 P.2d 48, (1980). Rather, I would affirm this conviction for the reasons stated in the dissenting opinion there, where Casper's conviction was reversed because the jury was not told it could consider evidence of a prior robbery as probative of identity, even though identity would have been a "valid purpose" for receiving the evidence.
Additionally, the complex analysis engaged in by the majority to justify receipt of similar transaction evidence here because it is probative of intent, as distinguished from identity, demonstrates that the legal distinctions between the purposes for admitting or excluding evidence of similar transactions are so fine as to be indiscernible not only to many judges, but also certainly to lay juries. See Stone, The Rule of Exelusion of Similar Fact Evidence: England, 46 Harv.L.Rev. 954 (1933); Stone, The Rule of Exclusion of Similar Fact Evidence: America, 51 Harv.L.Rev. 988 (1988). Indeed, admissibility for these reasons is so intertwined that frequently the purposes are discussed without distinction. E. g., People v. Honey, Colo., 596 P.2d 751 (1979) (motive and intent); People v. Ihme, 187 Colo. 48, 528 P.2d 380 (1974) (scheme, plan, intent, or design); People v. Mejia, 188 Colo. 120, 534 P.2d 779 (1975) (intent, knowledge, and identity). I agree that it is better practice for trial courts to receive and instruct on similar transaction evidence with precise reference as to what it tends to prove. However, the error, if any, in receiving such evidence because it is admissible for one valid purpose (e. g., intent), but not for another (e. g., identity), would be, at most, harmless. See People v. Reed, 42 Colo.App. 275, 598 P.2d 148 (1979).
Moreover, in Honey, supra, the court explained that one issue to be addressed in determining admissibility of similar transaction evidence is whether it is "relevant to a material issue of the case," (emphasis supplied), indicating to me that such evidence may be admitted if it goes to any, but not all, of the purposes of plan, scheme, design, intent, modus operandi, motive, or identity.