Court Opinion

ID: 9522325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:22:40.918556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:33.644237
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring.
In this situation, appellant was arrested a month after the drugstore robbery. The arrest took place at a motel in another county. He was arrested upon probable cause to believe that he and his companions had committed a crime which was then and is now totally unrelated to the drugstore *20robbery. I see no legitimate purpose to be served by the testimony of the police describing the events leading up to this arrest. It may have satisfied some curiosity on the part of the court, jury and counsel; showed the skill of the officers; dramatized the events; or have been amusing. However these are not the purposes of evidence at a trial on criminal charges and a courtroom is no place for such things. Evidence of this type can easily carry prejudicial implications that the accused is, for example, somehow unkind, lazy, irreverent, insolent, undisciplined, abusive, or generally undeserving. I am concerned, as I am sure the rest of this court is, that the trial courts of the state maintain a high degree of vigilance in restricting professional government witnesses to that part of the story of their investigation which has a thread of relevance to that which the prose-ecution is required to prove in order to make a prima facie case. It would have been well within the bounds of discretion for the officers in this case to have been restricted to testifying simply that appellant was arrested a month after the robbery at a motel in Indianapolis, and that his room had been searched, and several items seized, and so forth.
PRENTICE, J., concurs.