Court Opinion

ID: 9796401
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:56:44.971006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:12.034890
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
concurring in part and in
the judgment.
Although I too would reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and reinstate the defendant’s convictions, I do not agree that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting limited evidence of the defendant’s arrest. I not only consider the majority’s discussion of this point to be substantially misguided; but in light of its own conclusion that admission of this evidence was harmless, its opinion about consciousness of guilt has absolutely no effect on its ultimate judgment, and I therefore consider it gratuitous as well.
The majority opines that evidence concerning the circumstances of the defendant’s arrest could have been relevant to show his consciousness of guilt only if it demonstrated that he knew the police were trying to arrest him and his conduct amounted to a deliberate attempt to avoid being arrested. Here, it considered the evidence inadequate, largely because no one but the defendant’s mother testified that he was expressly told the police were waiting outside his house to arrest him; and when she relayed this information to him, he gave himself up. To my mind, this analysis misses the mark, both because the majority misperceives the general nature of a relevancy determination and because it mis-perceives the respective responsibilities of the trial court and jury in evaluating a condition of fact upon which the relevance of particular evidence depends.
With regard to the latter, even if nothing short of a deliberate attempt by the defendant to avoid arrest could be considered probative of his consciousness of guilt, I believe the majority mistakenly concludes that the evidence in this case was insufficient. Where the relevance of evidence depends upon the fulfillment of a condition of fact, neither the trial court nor a reviewing court serves as the trier of fact. Rather, the rules of evidence require the trial court to admit the evidence upon or subject to the introduction of evidence sufficient to support a finding by the jury of that condition of fact. CRE 104(b) (Relevancy conditioned on fact). Only if there is no evidence from which reasonable jurors could find the condition of fact should the challenged evidence be rejected as irrelevant.
Here the record clearly contained evidence from which reasonable jurors could conclude that the defendant was aware the police were surrounding his house to arrest him, and yet for some time he refused to submit. It was clear that the defendant returned home from the hospital, aware of the victim’s injuries and her accusation that he had pushed her from the moving car in which he was transporting her against her will. It was also clear that when Deputy Long arrived, there were already as many as four police officers openly watching the front and back of the house. Long testified that he could see someone, whom he believed to be the defendant, peeking from the window, and that he had asked the defendant to come out, without success. The jury also heard that police officers from Brighton had already made contact with the person who was inside, and although he was willing to give them a driver’s license through a slit in the screen, he refused to come out.
Whether or not anyone besides the defendant’s mother actually told him that the police believed they already had probable cause for an arrest or that they would sit on the house until a warrant arrived, it is unrealistic to suggest that this evidence was not sufficient for reasonable jurors to infer that the defendant believed the police were surrounding his house to arrest him. The fact that he eventually came out, after being faced with the inevitable, in no way precluded a reasonable inference that he delayed and avoided arrest as long as he thought it advantageous or had any hope of being rescued from the situation. If deliberately avoiding arrest can be probative of the defendant’s consciousness of guilt, as even the majority concedes, the trial court did not act improperly under these circumstances in permitting the jury to decide whether the defendant was actually avoiding arrest.
*332More fundamentally, however, I believe the majority’s analysis betrays a kind of mechanical, pigeonholing approach to the analysis of relevancy, which has been squarely rejected in this jurisdiction (at least since the adoption of the Colorado Rules of Evidence) as unduly limiting trial court discretion. Quite apart from a specific attempt to avoid police apprehension and thwart an imminent arrest, efforts of all kinds to delay or hinder an investigation are widely acknowledged to be probative of a defendant’s consciousness of his guilt. See, e.g., Moore v. United States, 757 A.2d 78, 83 (D.C.2000) (“Given [defendant’s] suspicious denial that he was not driving a stolen car, the jury could very well infer that [defendant] knew he was driving a stolen car and that his intent in approaching Officer Bryant was to discourage any police investigation of his crime.”); Commonwealth v. Johnson, 46 Mass.App.Ct. 398, 706 N.E.2d 716, 722 (1999) (evidence that defendant twice failed to attend voice identification line-up properly admitted to show consciousness of guilt); Commonwealth v. Johnson, 542 Pa. 384, 668 A.2d 97, 106-07 (1995) (reasoning jury may infer defendant refused to participate in line-up because of his fear of identification due to his consciousness of guilt); U.S. v. Meling, 47 F.3d 1546, 1557 (9th Cir.1995) (evidence of defendant’s attempts to hinder FBI’s investigation properly admitted to show consciousness of guilt); People v. Edwards, 241 Ill.App.3d 839, 182 Ill.Dec. 428, 609 N.E.2d 962, 966 (1993) (“Defendant’s initial refusal to submit to blood testing has some tendency to indicate a consciousness of guilt and is therefore relevant and generally admissible.”); Marshall v. State, 85 Md.App. 320, 583 A.2d 1109, 1111 (1991) (“Interference with police investigation is recognized as conduct which may evidence a consciousness of guilt.”); State v. Sayles, 124 Wis.2d 593, 370 N.W.2d 265, 267 (1985) (finding error in trial court’s rejection of defendant’s testimony that he refused blood alcohol test because he wanted to consult his attorney first, after evidence of defendant’s refusal was admitted to show consciousness of guilt); State v. Mottram, 158 Me. 325, 184 A.2d 225, 230 (1962) (noting “consciousness of guilt could be shown by evidence that a witness refused to take a lie detector test on the ground that he believed the test was trustworthy or dependable.”).
The reasons for not limiting the proof of consciousness of guilt to narrowly circumscribed categories have long been acknowledged and articulated. “[0]ne of the common and established uses of the mode of reasoning here involved is the inference from guilty conduct to the commission of the guilty deed .... ” 2 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence In Trials At Common Law § 273(1) (James H. Chadbourn Rev.1979) (emphasis in original). “In general, it may be premised, that almost any conduct may be open to this inference. The kinds of behavior which may properly suggest such a cause are beyond enumeration; they are as various and as changeable as men’s dispositions and emotions. No conduct is conclusive; but on the' other hand, almost no conduct is entirely without significance, greater or less according to the circumstances ....” Id. (emphasis in original). “ ‘Is a flight the only outward evidence of conscious guilt? So far from it, any indications of it, arising from the conduct, demeanor, or expressions of the party, are legal evidence against him. The law can never limit the number or kind of such indications.’ ” Id. (quoting Johnson v. State, 17 Ala. 618, 624 (1850)).
If the many accounts of the defendant’s attempts to dissuade the victim from notifying the police and his precipitous departure from the hospital were credited by the jury at all, it must have also believed that he expected, at the very least, to be investigated for injuring the victim. To the extent that consciously hindering or delaying a police investigation by absenting oneself might be considered less probative than actually avoiding an imminent arrest, it would presumably be less prejudicial in the eyes of the jury as well. Obviously, neither demonstrates conclusively a defendant’s motive for refusing to cooperate and submit to police investigation, but by the same token, neither carries with it the potential for unfair prejudice of, for instance, evidence of uncharged criminal misconduct. As the majority appears to acknowledge, the balancing of probativeness and prejudice must remain largely within the discretion of trial courts, without their being subject to the second-guessing of appellate courts.
Finally, I take issue with the majority’s choice to review the trial court’s evidentiary *333ruling at all. In light of its determination that other evidence in the record ultimately renders this ruling inconsequential, the majority makes clear that its discussion of relevance amounts to nothing more than obiter dicta. While occasions may certainly arise in which it is helpful, or even important, for an appellate court to explain itself or provide guidance beyond the narrow rationale for its holding, this is clearly not one of them. Evi-dentiary rulings in general, and rulings on relevance in particular, are inherently fact-driven, with little application beyond the evidence in a particular case. To the extent that the majority intends to propose a rule of general applicability, narrowing the kinds of evidence acceptable to show consciousness of guilt, I consider such a proposal ill-advised outside the context of an actual case or controversy that will be impacted by the application of that rule.
Sound policy considerations support the exercise of judicial restraint in matters not necessary to the resolution of a live controversy. While I concur in the remainder of the majority’s opinion and in its judgment, I do not join its dicta concerning consciousness of guilt.