Court Opinion

ID: 9848786
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:27:10.908377+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:45.681181
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). Charles Oliphant was convicted of rape1 and gross indecency.2
Oliphant’s and the complainant’s accounts of the circumstances of their meeting and other events preceding the sexual acts generally agreed. The factual issue was whether she consented to the sexual acts.
Postulating that it would assist the jury in deciding the issue of consent, the judge permitted three other women to testify, over objection, that, within a few months of the incident charged, Oliphant had raped them. They too had voluntarily entered into a brief relationship with him and accepted an automobile ride during which, they *505asserted, he detoured to a place where they were forced to participate in sexual acts.
All agree that although evidence that the defendant has committed other crimes may tend to support an inference that he is predisposed to commit crime or a particular crime and, therefore, is relevant because it may tend to support the further inference that he committed the charged offense, it is long-established judicial policy that evidence tending to show that the defendant committed an offense not charged in the information is not admissible for the purpose of showing his criminal disposition or a character trait or propensity to commit that offense to support an inference that he committed the charged offense.3
Litigation concerns the scope of exceptions allowing admission of evidence tending to establish an element of the charged offense or to negative a defense, subject to the power of the court to bar such evidence where the probative value is outweighed by the likelihood that it will unduly prejudice the jury against the defendant, preventing an objective determination of the disputed factual issues.
Seeing, with the trial judge and the Court of Appeals, a similarity in the women’s descriptions of the events surrounding the sexual acts, this Court holds the evidence admissible on the ground that "[e]vidence of a plan or scheme on the part of defendant to orchestrate events to make proof of nonconsent difficult is, of course, probative of the contested issue of nonconsent,” and declares that it will not substitute its judgment for that of the trial judge in the balancing of probative value and prejudicial effect.
*506The Court’s holding incorporates a number df conclusions: that the pattern evidences a plan or scheme; that the purpose of the plan or scheme perceived is to make proof of non-consent difficult; that, implicitly, the pattern, plan or scheme makes proof of non-consent difficult; and that it is probative on whether the complainant consented. The opinion of the Court does not consider alternative analyses or state reasons for all its conclusions.
I share the apprehension, reflected in the judgment of the trial judge and the opinions of the Court of Appeals and this Court, that Oliphant sexually exploits women. I am unable to join in the Court’s opinion because it fails to state a principled basis for an exception to the general rule against the admission of other crimes evidence.
The evidence that Oliphant is a rapist is inadmissible to prove a character trait or propensity to commit the charged offense to support an inference that he may have raped the complainant. Such evidence, while probative of a propensity to use force to have sexual intercourse if advances are resisted, is indistinguishable from what may not be proven, propensity to rape.
A man’s propensity to use force is not probative of non-consent; it shows rather how he may react or what may occur if the woman does not consent.
Unless a woman is abducted, the social relationship between the man and woman will appear consensual. Because sexual relations are generally solicited and occur in private, whenever the issue in a sexual offense case is consent the prosecution will be largely dependent on the testimony of the complainant, due to the nature of the offense and not to "orchestration”.
*507The evidence that Oliphant pursued women in a conventional pattern of consensual social relationships does not tend to establish that he acted in accordance with a plan. Even if a plan is perceived, there is no objective basis for concluding that Oliphant’s purpose in adopting the plan was to hinder effective prosecution by making non-consent difficult to prove rather than to facilitate meeting women and transporting them to a place where they could be solicited for sexual purposes.
Assuming, arguendo, that pattern evidence was admissible for this purpose, the prosecutor had the burden of establishing that defendant’s conduct was pursuant to a plan, not custom or habit, and that the purpose of any such plan was jury persuasion, not woman persuasion. Unless there is an objective basis, apart from the allegations of rape, for concluding that the defendant had a plan and that its purpose, or primary purpose, was jury persuasion, there is no reason for distinguishing this case from other cases where allegations of other rapes have been made against a defendant. Surely, allegations of other rapes may not be proven simply because the social relationship whs consensual and the act of intercourse occurred in private; but that, I fear, is the tendency of the Court’s opinion.
Even if the consensual format of the relationship was "orchestrated”, it could not give rise to an inference or appearance of consent. It would not be reasonable to infer from a woman’s participation with a man in a social relationship and agreement to accompany him in an automobile that she consented to have sexual intercourse with him. Since no inference adverse to the complailiaiit results from the consensual format of her relationship with Oliphant, there is no basis for *508allowing evidence to rebut such an inference even if the format were orchestrated.
It is understandable that the prosecutor would have a sense of frustration following the earlier trials which resulted in Oliphant’s acquittal of raping witnesses B and C and a mistrial in the instant case when the jury failed to agree on a verdict.
It is the Court’s duty, however, to preserve the adjudicative process arid safeguards designed to assure all persons a fair trial against being overrun by a juggernaut of felt concern to facilitate a result perceived to be just in a particular case.
The Court should not uncritically yield to the assumptions implicit in the contention that the consensual format of Oliphant’s social relationships with women unduly hindered prosecution.
Jurors know that some men take sexual advantage of women and that merely because a social relationship is consensual and sexual acts are in private does not mean that the woman consented. Although the first jury that heard the evidence in this case could not agree on a verdict, the complainant and the prosecutor succeeded — despite the so-called orchestration and consensual aspects of the initial relationship — in convincing some jurors that the complainant did not consent.4
When the issue in a rape case is consent, decision will turn on the jurors’ evaluations of credibility which will depend not only on their appraisal of the plausibility and coherence of the competing testimony and the circumstantial evidence, but on *509an intrinsically subjective evaluation: What kind of a man is the defendant; what kind of woman is the complainant?
The prosecutor’s difficulty in obtaining a conviction may have been attributable to the composition of the juries, their biases and way of thinking about life and people. Juries tend to be composed of older persons with middle-class values, persons likely to regard with dismay a woman who meets a man under the circumstances described by the complainant and on short acquaintance accompanies him on an automobile ride. Additional factors may have been juror notions regarding the mores of college students and white women who date black men. Middle-class values explain, as plausibly as orchestration, the frustration of the earlier efforts to convict Oliphant.
If I am correct in venturing that the difficulty in successfully prosecuting Oliphant was not orchestration but may have been middle-class values, the prosecutor’s objectives might be achieved by granting Oliphant the relief he seeks, a retrial by a jury composed of a more representative group of citizens, including peers of Oliphant and the complainant, black and white young men and women.5
6
A jury without a generation gap might be less inclined to view with disfavor a woman who, in the circumstances described, on short acquaintance accompanies a man on an automobile journey. Public safety does not require further dismantling of the sound and long-established rule against use of propensity evidence, recently extended by the Legislature to complainants in rape prosecutions.6 Nor is there need further to under*510mine, by indirection, the rule against duplicitous informations.7
The Court has attempted to articulate a principled distinction justifying the admission of testimony alleging other rapes. It has succeeded only in creating an exception unprecedented in this state which, hopefully, will be confined to circumstances here present where a combination of factors — casual acquaintance, racial difference between the defendant and the complainant, and cultural difference between the complainant and the persons comprising the jury — may have put the complainant in a bad light with jurors.
I am concerned that the exception will not be so limited.8
9The history of exceptions to the general rule barring admission of other crimes evidence is not reassuring; once stated in a particular case an exception tends to be applied mechanically and to take on a life of its own.8
Further, the Court permits re-litigation of factual issues already resolved against the people in earlier prosecutions in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
*511I
In the earlier trials, where consent was the only issue, Oliphant was acquitted of raping witnesses B and C.10 The doctrine of collateral estoppel bars re-litigation of whether B and 0 consented to engage in sexual acts with him. " 'Collateral estoppel’ * * * stands for an extremely important principle in our adversary system of justice. It means simply that when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit" Ashe v Swenson, 397 US 436, 443; 90 S Ct 1189; 25 L Ed 2d 469 (1970) (emphasis supplied).11
The Court acknowledges this rule of law, but would limit it to re-litigation of a factual issue in a subsequent trial for an offense arising out of the same transaction.12
The United States Court of Appeals foi* the Fifth Circuit has rejected the "same transaction” limitation: "Although both Mr. Justice Brennan in his concurrence and Chief Justice Burger in his dissent discuss the 'same transaction’ test as a standard for double jeopardy we do not believe that the holding in Ashe rests on that foundation. Instead the Court speaks in terms of prohibiting a relitigation in any future lawsuit between the *512same parties of issues actually determined at a previous trial.” Wingate v Wainwright, 464 F2d 209, 213 (CA 5, 1972) (emphasis in original).13
The rule prohibiting re-litigation of the same factual issue, incorporated into the Double Jeopardy Clause, protects the accused from having to "run the gantlet”14 more than once. The Double Jeopardy Clause is a guarantee "that the State with all its resources and power [shall] not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity * * * ”. Green v United States, 355 US 184, 187; 78 S Ct 221; 2 L Ed 2d 199 (1957).
It is idle to suggest that Oliphant was not required to run the gantlet a second time regarding the circumstances of his sexual relations with witnesses B and C. "It is fundamentally unfair and totally incongruous with our basic concepts of justice to permit the sovereign to offer proof that a defendant committed a specific crime which a jury of that sovereign has concluded he did not commit. Otherwise a person could never remove himself from the blight and suspicious aura which surrounds an accusation that he is guilty of a specific crime.” Wingate v Wainwright, supra, p 215.
*513Although the Court concedes that "[a]n issue of fact in each of the prior trials was whether 'B’ and 'C’ consented to the intercourse or submitted as the result of the threat of force”, it states that "[t]hese issues are distinct from the question of whether complainant consented to intercourse or submitted as the result of the threat of force”. Indeed, and that is why A, B and C’s testimony is not material; see part II infra. Moreover, their testimony is of no probative value to the prosecution unless the jurors conclude that Oliphant raped them. The prosecutor necessarily asked the jury to so conclude.
The cases of B and C were actions between the same parties now before the Court (the people and Oliphant). It was adjudicated that the people had not proved that Oliphant’s sexual relationships with B and C were non-consensual.15
Yet the prosecutor was permitted to ask this jury to reach the opposite conclusion. Oliphant was accordingly required to defend against allegations that factual issues resolved in the cases of B and C had been erroneously decided. This was violative of the Double Jeopardy Clause.16
*514II
The Court declares that the other women’s testimony that Oliphant raped them under similar circumstances is probative of whether the complainant in the instant case consented to participate in sexual acts with him, an issue distinguishable from Oliphant’s propensity to engage in sexual activity irrespective of consent.
The statutory issue is whether the sexual intercourse was "by force and against her will”.17
While evidence that Oliphant has raped other women is probative of a propensity to use force, if deemed necessary, to have sexual intercourse, that propensity is indistinguishable from what may not be proven, propensity to rape.
A man’s propensity to use force suggests how he might react to a woman’s refusal to consent. It does not tend to show whether the woman’s consent obviated such a reaction or the "will” of the woman.
The "victim’s” propensity to engage in sexual intercourse tnay not, under the new criminal sex*515ual conduct statute,18 be shown. This reinforces the public policy against the use of propensity evidence. Fairness to persons accused of sexual offenses requires that there be no dilution of the traditional safeguard against the use of propensity evidence against defendants.
While Oliphant’s propensity to use force indicates that if the complainant resisted, he may have sought to have sexual intercourse by force or threat of force, it does not indicate whether the complainant resisted or consented uninfluenced by force.
In sum, a man’s propensity to use force When he encounters resistance does not tend to show whether a woman resisted, submitted under duress or consented freely. Such a propensity does not tend to show that the woman did not consent but rather what may have occurred if she did not. The evidence of other rapes tends to show that Oliphant is a rapist and may be guilty of the offense charged, that if he thought it necessary he would have used force or a show of force to have inter*516course with the complainant. Although the evidence is probative of propensity to use force (propensity to rape) it is not admissible for that purpose. Such evidence does not negate complainant’s consent or tend to show non-consent, the issue it is said to be probative of and admissible to prove.
Ill
The Court says that the pattern evidence is admissible to show that Oliphant "orchestrate[d] events to make proof of nonconsent difficult”.
The prosecutor had no difficulty in making a prima facie showing of non-consent. He did so, as is generally done, through the testimony of the complainant. His difficulty at the first trial in the instant case, which ended without a verdict when the jury could not agree, was in persuading the jury to believe the complainant’s testimony and to disbelieve Oliphant’s.
The prosecutor’s problem of jury persuasion in this case does not differ from that in other sexual offense cases, where the social relationship was consensual, the circumstantial or objective evidence is inconclusive or nonexistent, and the verdict depends on the jury’s perception of the complainant’s and defendant’s credibility. The meeting will have been consensual, in a public place or in the presence of others, followed by a social relationship and commission of the sexual acts in private, absent disinterested witnesses able to testify as to consent. Defendants have similar problems of proof in such cases.
Pattern evidence does not bear on credibility. The evidence that Oliphant raped three other women does not tend to show that the complainant is a truthful person or that Oliphant is not.
*517A man who has raped a woman and is charged with that offense has reason to testify falsely without regard to whether he has raped other women; the incentive is no greater if this were not his first rape.19
Other allegations of rape do tend to make the complainant’s story more believable, not because we know more about her or Oliphant’s tendency to tell the truth, but because such evidence gives us reason to believe that he is the kind of man who would commit the charged offense. That, however, is precisely the purpose for which this evidence may not be admitted.
IV
The characterization of Oliphant’s relationships with the women as a plan designed to make proof of non-consent difficult and to hinder effective prosecution is based on the following factors:
1) There were similarities in Oliphant’s conduct: Oliphant took the initiative in meeting the women; he met them on the street or sidewalk; the same automobile was used to transport them to the place where intercourse occurred; the conversations were similar in subject matter; the women were taken to unfamiliar sites; they were threatened with a dangerous weapon not shown; they were ordered to disrobe; Oliphant employed a similar manner of sexual stimulation and conversation regarding the woman’s sexual response.
*5182) The social relationships preceding intercourse were consensual.
3) Efforts were made to discourage the women from complaining to the authorities.
4) Oliphant’s conduct was deceptive, especially in detouring from the destination originally agreed upon to the unfamiliar site where intercourse occurred.
5) All the women were white.
6) All four incidents occurred within a five-month period.
A
Actually, there were dissimilarities as well as similarities in Oliphant’s conduct.20
*519Many of the points of similarity argued to the jury were not material to the issue of consent or the appearance of consent. The Court acknowledges that the facts "which tended to show a pattern in the actual sexual contact between defendant and the women [presumably the manner of sexual stimulation and conversation regarding the women’s sexual response were] irrelevant and immaterial to establishing a scheme, plan or system to orchestrate events so as to indicate consent.”
The Court rests its characterization (orchestration) and determination on the "striking” similarities in the testimony of the women, objective criteria. It appears, however, that the similarities —the man takes the initiative, the meeting is impromptu and in a public place, an automobile is used to transport the woman to an unfamiliar site and the man uses the same "line” with a number of women — are present in many social relationships which culminate in sexual acts and in many which do not.21
It is not the points of identity or the modus operandi of the other crimes evidence that give credibility to the complainant’s testimony but the assertions of the other women that the other acts of intercourse were rapes. Without those assertions — which go only to propensity — the points of identity and modus operandi are not probative. They show simply that the defendant pursues college-age white women and that the pursuit *520follows a common format: impromptu meeting, conversation, automobile ride, more conversation, intercourse.
The similarities of the encounters with the other women — unaccompanied by allegations that the sexual acts which resulted were not consensual— does not tend to prove any fact that a prosecutor would seek to establish. Evidence that Oliphant had, following a similar pattern, struck up relationships with other women who accompanied him to secluded places and engaged in sexual acts would, without the allegation that their participation was non-consensual, be exculpatory. Such evidence would show that Oliphant pursues and is sexually attractive to women.
The allegations that the sexual acts with the other women were non-consensual, all would agree, are in themselves inadmissible; they tend to show only a propensity to commit the charged offense. The pattern evidence does not tend to support the complainant’s testimony; it is the allegations of rape which have that tendency. Since the pattern evidence is not probative without the allegations of rape and becomes probative only with those allegations, it is the inadmissible allegations which alone are probative.
The Court’s characterization thus becomes the vehicle by which evidence otherwise inadmissible becomes admissible. The Court, seeking a principled explanation, declares that there is a pattern and that the pattern is deceptive, but cannot, apart from the inadmissible allegations of rape, distinguish this case from other situations where men and women, following a pattern of social conduct they have found successful in the past, engage in consensual sexual acts on either brief or extended acquaintance.
*521B
Assuming that the consensual format of the relationships and the other points of similarity in Oliphant’s conduct were material to the issue of whether the intercourse was consensual, it does not follow that because there were similarities there was a plan, or that if there was a plan its purpose was to create an appearance of consent, or that it did so.
It. is not reasonable to conclude that simply because there is a pattern there is a design, or that because the pattern is consensual the sexual acts were non-consensual. The conclusion is opposed to the ordinary experience of sexually active men and women who have sexual relations, with different partners over a period of time, having in retrospect a pattern in the manner of the encounter and the course of the relationship.
While it appears that Oliphant was deceptive in his relationships with the complainant and the other women and that he was in this manner able to transport them to unfamiliar sites where acts of intercourse occurred, there is no objective basis for concluding that his purpose was to give an appearance of consent rather than to induce the women to accompany him. Similarly, his threat to use a weapon may have been to secure prompt compliance with his demands rather than to give an appearance of consent.
Although all the women are white, that would not tend to create an appearance of consent.
The fact that all four incidents occurred within a five-month period indicates purposeful conduct; it does not indicate a purpose to create an appearance of consent.
The complainant’s testimony that Oliphant *522sought to discourage her from complaining to the authorities was inculpatory; it did not tend to create an appearance of consent on her part but of non-consent. The fact that a woman knows a man’s name or identity does not support an inference or give the appearance that she consented to sexual intercourse with him.
The testimony of the other women regarding Oliphant’s efforts to discourage prosecution does not tend to establish an element of the offense or rebut a defense but to show consciousness of guilt from which an inference of guilt may be drawn. Evidence of consciousness of guilt in other cases does not tend to show consciousness of guilt in this case and, accordingly, is not material or relevant.
Even if one concludes that the consensual format and Oliphant’s deceptions were designed to give an appearance of consent, and to make non-consent difficult to prove, they could not in fact have done so. The deceptions, public meeting, small talk and automobile trip may have tended to show that this was a normal dating relationship. But the existence of such a relationship does not indicate that the woman consented to have sexual intercourse and therefore does not tend to negative non-consent or make non-consent difficult to prove.
It is not assumed by either men or women that when a woman accepts an invitation to socialize with a man and accompany him in an automobile that she has thereby indicated her consent fo engage in sexual intercourse with him.
It would not be reasonable for the jury to infer that the complainant consented to have sexual intercourse with Oliphant simply because she spoke with him, entered his automobile and traveled with him to several places of public entertain*523ment. The arguably deceptive and contrived consensual format of the relationship would not tend, therefore, to support an inference of consent or to make non-consent difficult to prove.
A criminal scheme, plan or system may not be shown in the abstract. To be admissible, it must, minimally, tend to show a fact, other than propensity to commit crime, that is material and relevant. The fact evidenced by such other crimes evidence must be honestly in dispute and of sufficient importance so that the probative worth of the evidence may outweigh the otherwise unwarranted prejudice to the defendant in admitting such evidence.
While the testimony of the other women tends to corroborate the complainant’s testimony that she was subjected to a methodology similar to that experienced by other women who claimed they were raped by Oliphant, neither the methodology nor the testimony that they were raped, although probative that Oliphant has a propensity to rape, tends to show that the complainant did not consent. The testimony of the other women shows that Oliphant uses force; it does not show that she did not consent; it is not probative of non-consent.
V
The Court’s opinion may encourage the police to attempt to locate other persons with whom an accused person once had a social and sexual relationship to determine whether they are willing to testify against him. If, for whatever reason, other persons are willing to do so, it is likely that there will be points of arguable similarity in the unearthed and charged relationships — in the manner in which the parties met, the car the accused drives, the restaurants and bars he frequents, the *524small talk, the manner employed to arouse his own or the other person’s libido, the sexual acts, and the subsequent relationship.
The decision to admit such exploitative testimony is tantamount to a decision to convict. Allowing trial judges a discretion to admit such evidence is equivalent to conferring on them a discretion to all but direct a verdict of guilty.
The Court states that it will not substitute its judgment for that of the trial judge. What has occurred in this case is so extraordinary that, in my judgment, if it is permitted at all, the appellate courts must assume a supervisory responsibility, case by case, to determine whether the other crimes evidence was properly admitted and to hear, even before trial, interlocutory appeals to decide whether such evidence may be admitted lest pleas of guilty to lesser offenses be exacted on the representation that such testimony will be offered and that the judge will admit it.
Judges will probably be called upon to admit such evidence in cases where the prosecutor feels strongly that the defendant is guilty and his case, without such evidence, is weak. In cases arising out of consensual social relations there will always be points of similarity and dissimilarity. The judge will therefore always have a basis for admitting the other crimes evidence, or excluding it.
The trial judge in this case had no basis for concluding that this was not a common consensual pattern except for the allegations of rape. In allowing admission of such evidence on a discretionary basis the Court is, in effect, conferring on trial judges authority to admit evidence based on their view of the credibility of the defendant, the complainant and the other women.
The judge’s discretion will inevitably be exer*525cised based on the representations made to him and his view of the credibility of the witnesses simply because this Court has not delineated and cannot delineate objective criteria for exercising such discretion.
It may be asserted that a trial judge; in admitting this evidence, is not making a final judgment and that ultimately it is for the jury to decide whether there is a pattern, whether a consensual pattern is probative of non-consent and whether the allegations of rape are to be believed. The jury was not so instructed in this case, but, even if it had been, the outcome would no doubt have been the same. The reason why other crimes evidence is generally excluded is because it precludes an objective assessment of the evidence by the jury.
Introduction of such evidence so transforms a criminal prosecution as to require the most punctilious appellate review lest the exception become the rule as reported and unreported appellate decisions monotonously come down "no abuse of discretion”.
VI
The evidence of Oliphant’s modus operandi was first introduced as part of the people’s case-in-chief through the testimony of the complainant. While the defendant added his testimonial version, it was the prosecutor, not the deféndant, who "opened the door”.
I appreciate that the prosecutor is obliged to show the entire transaction, the evidence tending to oppose as well as that tending to support a conviction.
Where, however, the prosecutor contends that, because the defendant’s format for pursuit of *526women tends to create an appearance of consent and is therefore exculpatory, he should be permitted to offer evidence of other such pursuits by the defendant, the simpler and fairer means of accomplishing the stated purpose, assuming agreement with the premise that the format is exculpatory, would be to give the defendant the option of having such exculpatory evidence limited or excluded, or of having the other crimes evidence admitted.
Evidence of the relative civility of the initial relatidnship was not essential to either the prosecution or defense. Rather than exposing the defendant to the highly prejudicial other crimes evidence, which made it impossible for the jury to view objectively the competing testimony on the issues of force and consent, the defendant and the people of this state would have been better served by excluding altogether the facts preceding the commencement of the trip to the place where the sexual acts occurred.
The prosecutor, defense counsel, complainant and defendant could have been instructed to confine the testimony regarding the circumstances of the initial relationship to a simple statement, which could even have been made by the judge, that the complainant had accepted an invitation from the defendant to ride with him in his automobile. The judge could state that the circumstances of their relationship before that time will not be disclosed because they may tend to create an unfavorable impression of either the complainant or the defendant, and could instruct the jurors not to speculate whether it was one or the other who would be viewed unfavorably by fuller disclosure of the preceding relationship.
The complainant could still have told her story *527that she was supposed to have been taken one place and was instead taken to another, where she was raped. The defendant could then have told his story. The jury would then decide which version to accept without the court having put its thumb, nay both feet, on the scales of justice.
I do not mean to suggest that such truncated disclosure is desirable, but at least the defendant would have had a chance, as would the prosecutor, before a jury unbeguiled by the allegedly "orchestrated” events.
Another approach would be to recognize that even if a man has a plan to orchestrate events to give an appearance of consent, there will of necessity be a minimal social relationship that is not contrived to that end but to the simpler purpose of meeting women and inducing them to accompany him to a place where they can be solicited for sexual purposes. The judge might exclude evidence pf so much of the relationship as he determines is contrived (orchestrated) to give the appearance of consent. I appreciate that there are no objective criteria for making such determination, but neither are there for making the determination made by the judge and approved by this Court in this case.
In balancing any unfairness to the prosecution from any inferences that may be drawn as a result of the consensual nature of the relationship against the unfairness to the defendant from the inferences that will be drawn as a result of the allegations of other rapes, the accommodation here suggested would, I think, recognize the legitimate interest of the prosecution to be protected from contrived evidence and the right of the defendant to a fair trial. This approach has the advantage, in comparison with the first suggestion (beginning *528the story in the middle and a cautionary instruction), that the jury need not be apprised that evidence has been excluded, the jury will have a more complete history of the relationship, and, since the complainant and defendant are allowed to testify more fully, there will be a more meaningful basis for cross-examination and jury assessment of credibility.
VII
The Legislature has declared that the sexual propensities of a complainant in a rape case are not admissible, paralleling the rule barring the admission of propensity evidence against defendants in criminal cases.
The exception created in the affirmance of this conviction will, if emulated in other cases, provide a basis for engrafting exceptions on the newly declared policy.
If the consensual nature and pattern of the relationship is deemed probative of non-consent, it is also arguably probative of consent. Just as the people will seek to identify similarities in the social and sexual histories of defendants, defendants will invoke the court’s ultimate power to control the admission of evidence, even if exercise of that power conflicts with a statute,22 and will seek out striking similarities to establish a pattern of complainant behavior supportive of defendant’s assertion that the sexual relationship was consensual.
While it is always possible to rationalize distinctions, it will be difficult to reconcile on a principled basis treating defendants differently from complainants.

 See McCormick, Evidence (2d ed), § 190, p 447. See also FR Ev 403, 404.

 There were circumstances tending to inculpate Oliphant. The missing door handle on the passenger side, and the improbability that the complainant, according to medical testimony a virgin, would agree to have intercourse with Oliphant, whom she had met only a few hours earlier, although she had not had intercourse with her boyfriend with whom she had engaged in oral sexual acts.

 Oliphant assigned as error the failure to include in the jury panel persons between the ages of 18 and 21.

 MCLA 750.520a et seq.; MSA 28.788(1) etseq.

 1 Gillespie, Michigan Criminal Law and Procedure (2d ed), § 372, p 447. See fn 16, infra.

 It may be argued that my concern is obviated by the change in the statute.
The new criminal sexual conduct act does not speak in terms 'of the Victim’s consent or will but of whether "force or coercion is used to accomplish the sexual penetration” or "contact”. MCLA 750.520a, et seq.; MSA 28.788(1) et seq. The act provides that the "victim need not resist the actor”. MCLA 750.520i; MSA 28.788(9).
The primary issue is whether force or coercion is used; non-consent may, it would appear, be an inference from evidence of force or coercion. Consent would, of course, be a defense. See generally Robinson, Civil and Criminal Evidence, 21 Wayne L Rev 437, 484 (1975).

 Note, Procedural Protections of the Criminal Defendant — A .ReEvaluation of the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination and the Rule Excluding Evidence of Propensity to Commit Crime, 78 Harv L Rev 426, 439 (1964); Note, Other Crimes Evidence at Trial: Of Balancing and Other Matters, 70 Yale L J 763, 768 (1961).

 Witness A did not file a complaint with the police.

 In Ashe v Swenson, 397 US 436; 90 S Ct 1189; 25 L Ed 2d 469 (1970), six men, engaged in a poker game, Were robbed by masked gunmen. Defendant was acquitted of robbing one of the players. In a Federal habeas corpus proceeding, the United States Supreme Court held that defendant’s acquittal in the first trial at which the issue was identity precluded the state’s attempt to prove his identity in a Second trial alleging that he robbed another player.

 All offenses arising out of the same transaction must be tried together. People v White, 390 Mich 245; 212 NW2d 222 (1973). The Court’s construction of the doctrine of collateral estoppel virtually eliminates the doctrine in criminal prosecutions in this state,

 The Court held
"that under Ashe where the state in an otherwise proper prosecution seeks for any purpose to relitigate an issue which was determined in a prior prosecution of the same parties, then the evidence offered for such a relitigation must be excluded from trial and the state must be precluded from asserting that the issue should be determined in any way inconsistent with the prior determination.” Wingate v Wainwright, 464 F2d 209, 215 (CA 5, 1972).
Similarly, see Blackburn v Cross, 510 F2d 1014 (CA 5, 1975).

 Green v United States, 355 US 184, 190; 78 S Ct 221; 2 L Ed 2d 199 (1957).

 The Court states that "[o]ffering evidence of a prior crime, for which defendant has been acquitted, to a jury embarked on a distinct inquiry, as here, does not involve asking the second jury to convict defendant for the prior crime. It does not involve the second jury contradicting the first jury, since the first jury did not find that the defendant did not commit the crime, only that the people had not proved that he had beyond a reasonable doubt”. The Supreme Court rejected this theory in Ashe, supra, p 443, where it stated "As a rule of federal law, therefore, '[i]t is much too late to suggest that this principle [of collateral estoppel] is not fully applicable to a former judgment in a criminal case, either because of lack of "mutuality” or because the judgment may reflect only a belief that the Government had not met the higher burden of proof exacted in such cases for the Government’s evidence as a whole although not necessarily as to every link in the chain’ United States v Kramer, 289 F2d 909, 913 [CA 2, 1961].”

 What was done here is at a level of impropriety even greater than if Oliphant had been theretofore convicted of raping B and C *514and evidence of those convictions had been offered on the theories advanced in this case.
The other crimes evidence here showed not only wrongdoing, but in effect put Oliphant on trial for such wrongdoing: the uncharged allegation of rape and the two charged rapes of which he was acquitted. On that ground alone the evidence should have been excluded.
The law prohibits the filing of a duplicitous information because it recognizes the difficulty of defending against multiple charges.
Oliphant could not have been charged with all four rapes in one information. See fn 7, supra. He should not have been prosecuted for more than one offense at a time by indirection. Although nominally one rape was proved by evidence of four rapes, the people asserted that it was necessary to prove four rapes to obtain a conviction; it is stultifying to maintain that in convicting Oliphant of raping the complainant the jury may not also have decided that he raped one or more of the other women who testified against him.

 MCLA 750.520; MSA 28.788.

 "(1) Evidence of specific instances of the victim’s sexual conduct, opinion evidence of the victim’s sexual conduct, and reputation evidence of the victim’s sexual conduct shall not be admitted under sections 520b to 520g unless and only to the extent that the judge finds that the following proposed evidence is material to a fact at issue in the case and that its inflammatory or prejudicial nature does not outweigh its probative value:
“(a) Evidence of the victim’s past sexual conduct with the actor.
"(b) Evidence of specific instances of sexual activity showing the source or origin of semen, pregnancy, or disease.
"(2) If the defendant proposes to offer evidence described in subsection (1)(a) or (b), the defendant within 10 days after the arraignment on the information shall file a written motion and offer of proof. The court may order an in camera hearing to determine Whether the proposed evidence is admissible under subsection (1). If new information is discovered during the course of the trial that may make the evidence described in subsection (1)(a) or (b) admissible, the judge may order an in camera hearing to determine whether the proposed evidence is admissible under subsection (1).” MCLA 750.520j; MSA 28.788(10).

 While the law permits evidence of convictions to be introduced as bearing on credibility, allegations of other crimes are not admissible for this purpose.
There appears to be considerable agreement that even convictions have no bearing on truth telling. See the opinions of the justices in People v Jackson, 391 Mich 323; 217 NW2d 22 (1974).

 Two of the women, witnesses B and C, took the initiative by hitch-hiking. Witness A was walking to work and accepted a ride. The complainant was window-shopping when Oliphant stopped to talk to her.
Three of the women entered the automobile at the inception of the relationship. The complainant entered the automobile half an hour after she met Oliphant.
Two of the acts of intercourse occurred in the automobile; the other two in an apartment.
The topics of conversation varied. Witness A testified that they talked about the weather, about celebrating Christmas, which was the next day, and that Oliphant had asked her if she had ever tried marijuana and if she had ever dated blacks. The conversation with B related to the fact that they were both students. They also talked about marijuana and about blacks and whites dating. Witness C said they talked about her major in college, which Oliphant said was his major. They also talked about college and professors. Complainant testified that their conversation concerned racial prejudice in her home town. They talked about their attitudes toward meeting people, about how they both enjoyed dancing, about schools, her family, her high school, the atmosphere at the bar they patronized; complainant said her sister liked marijuana but that complainant had only tried it once.
While Oliphant is alleged to have threatened each of the witnesses, different or unspecified weapons were referred to.
Witnesses B and C were ordered to remove their clothes and to dance. Witness A and the complainant were ordered to remove their underpants.
Witness A was taken to a farming area, B and C to apartments in *519an unfamiliar part of town, and the complainant to a secluded residential area.
Oliphant was accompanied by another man when B and C were given rides, taken to the apartments and allegedly raped, He was alone throughout the relationships with A and complainant.

 See Tribe, Trial by Mathematics: Precision and Ritual in the Legal Process, 84 Harv L Rev 1329 (1971).

 Perm v Peuler (On Rehearing), 373 Mich 531; 130 NW2d 4 (1964).