Court Opinion

ID: 9663512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:41:12.329941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:40:30.729587
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
What rationale can there be supporting (a) severing for trial counts one and two from three and four and (b) proceeding to then place the severed counts before the *756jury in the form of “prior bad acts”? Decisions on severance and admissibility of evidence should work, like hand in glove, and be consistent with each other. Here, we have an inconsistency. Discretion must be exercised, based upon reason and evidence, and there can be no reason or logic behind severance — to preclude admissibility — and then permit the evidence to go before the jury. It is self-defeating and it defeats the entire purpose behind the grant of the severance in the first instance. We must remember that the trial judge did grant a motion to sever counts one and two from counts three and four because trial counsel for defendant insisted that to try them all together would be “prejudicial joinder.” His motion was captioned “Motion for Relief from Prejudicial Joinder.”
In my opinion, there has been an abuse of discretion in permitting evidence of these counts, which were severed for trial, to be admitted. Without doubt, the January 1, 1986 fire and the December 31, 1986 fire were severed for trial. Our standard of review is to determine if the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the evidence. State v. Dace, 333 N.W.2d 812 (S.D.1983). We must assume that the trial court granted severance, which is left to the trial court’s discretion under State v. Closs, 366 N.W.2d 138 (S.D.1985), after it involved its consideration in a balancing of interest which included consideration of prejudice. State v. Andrews, 393 N.W.2d 76 (S.D.1986). It strikes this author that the trial judge honestly and fairly believed that there was an obvious prejudicial conflict in trying these counts together. Notwithstanding, the trial court changed its mind, during the course of trial, and permitted prejudicial evidence to be infused into the trial.
The limiting instruction contained in footnote 9 of the majority opinion, given by the trial court, was to try to wash clean the fact that the trial court was about to embark upon receiving evidence which, in absolute effect, had been severed. This limiting instruction could not have erased the prejudicial effect of this evidence from the jury’s mind under the circumstances of this case. In point of fact, the limiting instruction reinforced the importance and applicability of the severed “bad act” or “crime.” The so-called limiting instruction, found in footnote 9 of the majority opinion, emphasized that the jury could consider the “bad act” for four separate, specific purposes pertaining to the alleged crime upon which the defendant was not charged. Actually, the defendant was worse off than had the counts not been severed, for the State was now in a position where it did not have to prove the January 1, 1986 fire beyond a reasonable doubt. As I have written before, a jury cannot nicely cleave, like a surgeon with scalpel, the prejudicial from the nonprejudicial. Seeking to compartmentalize evidence within a jury’s mind, by instruction, might work in theory; however, the practical effect is that the jury hears this damning evidence, in a case with circumstances such as this, and considers it notwithstanding the limiting instruction.
Hereby, reference is made to the minority viewpoint in State v. Jenner, 434 N.W.2d 76, 83 (S.D.1988) (Henderson, J., dissenting), for an abbreviated compilation of dissents by this author, all pertaining to the specific subject of prejudicial joinder/severance.
I join the rationale of Justice Sabers in his dissent.