Court Opinion

ID: 9731402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:44:35.349556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.694650
License: Public Domain

KONENKAMP, Justice
(concurring in result on Issue I).
The majority misapplies SDCL 19-12-5 (Rule 404(b)) in holding admissible as “other acts” McGill’s conduct prior to July 1, 1993. McGill’s pre-enactment conduct was admitted as substantive proof of the crime charged against him, not as other acts tending to establish guilt for his post July 1, 1993 acts. The trial court specifically instructed the jury that it may consider these acts in deciding whether “the defendant engaged in a course of conduct.” An. element of stalking is harassment. SDCL 22-19A-1. Under the stalking statutes, harass is partially defined as “a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person_” SDCL 22-19A-4. Hence, course of conduct forms part of the corpus delicti for the crime of stalking. The trial court specifically disclaimed McGill’s pre-enactment actions as other acts:
It is certainly relevant as to the time period charged in the information and that there was a course of conduct over a period of time, and it doesn’t make any difference, I don’t think, as to whether that evidence was legal or illegal prior to July 1, 1993, so my ruling is, is that the State can use evidence of contacts or actions— contacts between the alleged victim and the Defendant or actions of the Defendant which tend to show any course of conduct, even though that conduct or those contacts occurred prior to July 1,1993. That is not other bad act evidence; that is part of the res gestae of the offense.
The evidence was admissible for the reason the trial court gave, as proof of a continual criminal scheme. The fact that the scheme began before the enactment of the statute declaring such behavior a crime, does not make its application ex post facto. “It is the continuing nature of such crimes as conspiracy and federal bank fraud which saves an indictment even though it alleges a scheme which was originated before, but was executed at least in part after, the effective criminalization of the activity involved in executing the scheme.” United States v. Whitty, 688 F.Supp. 48, 53 (D.Me.1988); United States v. Duke, 814 F.Supp. 29, 30 (M.D.Tenn.1993).
I concur in the remainder of the majority opinion.