Court Opinion

ID: 9739314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:12:02.848316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:11.499656
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in the result and in most of the court’s reasoning. I cannot agree, however, with the court’s conclusion that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the plastic head sex toy into evidence. “ ‘Relevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Minn. R. Evid. 401. The plastic head sex toy was not relevant to the victim’s decapitation or to anything else. The fact that Miller possessed the sex toy does not tell us anything about whether he killed the victim. Moreover, because this evidence lacked any probative value, the danger of unfair prejudice was clear and present. See Minn. R. Evid. 403 (stating “evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice”).
The trial court’s abuse of discretion notwithstanding, I would hold, on the record presented, that the error in admitting this piece of evidence was harmless. See State v. Chomnarith, 654 N.W.2d 660, 665 (Minn.2003) (noting that, if no constitutional violation has been alleged, the test for measuring whether the trial court’s abuse of discretion was harmless is whether the error substantially influenced the jury’s decision).