Court Opinion

ID: 9784185
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:39:31.389341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:50.305162
License: Public Domain

Justice BENDER,
dissenting:
The majority approves the mass admission of over a thousand pages of the defendant’s writings and drawings, many of which are repulsive and antisocial and others which are a high school student’s routine notebooks, assignments and doodles. Most of these writings and drawings have nothing to do with this grisly murder but instead paint the defendant as a boy obsessed with violence. Although I believe that proof of some of the defendant’s fantasies is admissible, many are not. The sheer volume of the inadmissible evidence so overwhelmed the admissible evidence that the defendant could not have a fair trial.
*1005In my view the majority’s opinion, which admits all of the. defendants’- writings and drawings, does great injustice to the purposes of C.R.E. 404(b) and opens doors to impermissible character evidence that previously had been closed. Because there exists a substantial risk that the defendant was convicted not for what he did, but for who he is, I respectfully dissent.
Discussion
The Colorado Rules of Evidence expressly forbid the use of character evidence to infer conduct. “Evidence of á person’s character or a trait of his character is not admissible for the purpose of proving that he acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion.” C.R.E. 404(a). The underlying purpose of this prohibition is to ensure that a person is judged according to what he has done, and not by who he is, i.e., his character. People v. Garner, 806 P.2d 366, 369 (Colo.1991) (“[Ejvidence of similar acts has inhering in it damning innuendo likely to beget prejudice in the minds of jurors .... ”)(internal citations omitted).
If the fact-finder is told, for instance, that a murder defendant acted violently in the past, he might infer that the defendant should be penalized for the murder because he is a violent person who figuratively or literally “got away with murder” in the past. See David P. Leonard, Character and Motive in Evidence Law, 34 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. 439, 450 (2001)(“The admission of character evidence, particularly evidence of a person’s past misdeeds ... invit[es] the fact finder to judge the person rather than the person’s charged acts.”). This inference is likely with other acts evidence because juries tend to overvalue it. See Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 475-76, 69 S.Ct. 213, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948)(finding that the issue is not that character evidence is irrelevant, but rather that-it “weigh[s] too much with the jury” so as to overpersuade them to prejudge one with a bad general record and deny him a fair opportunity to defend himself).1 There is a danger that the “presumption of innocence” operates only for the accused with a spotless past.2 Moreover, prior bad acts are poor predictors of future behavior.3
Given the dangers, if evidence is offered to show that a person has a particularly bad character trait, and acted according to that trait, then the evidence is always inadmissible. People v. Rath, 44 P.3d 1033, 1038 (Colo.2002)(finding that character evidence is always inadmissible to prove conduct, consistent with the long-standing policy of American and English evidence law). Proof of character is excluded because it may lead a jury to convict the accused on the ground of bad character deserving punishment, irrespective of guilt of the crime charged. Garner, 806 P.2d at 369; see also Edward J. Imwinkelried, Uncharged Misconduct Evidence § 219, at 105 (rev. ed.2001).
In certain situations, however, it is appropriate and highly relevant for the fact-finder to consider evidence of “other crimes, wrongs or acts” to infer conduct when it is admitted to prove “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence *1006of mistake or accident.” C.R.E. 404(b); Rath, 44 P.3d at 1038-39. This positive authorization, however, must always be tempered by the prohibitions found in 404(a) and 404(b) against admitting character evidence.
Specifically, under the “third-prong” of the Spoto test, a court must evaluate whether the logical relevance of the proffered other acts evidence is independent of the intermediate inference that the defendant has a bad character. People v. Spoto, 795 P.2d 1314, 1318-19 (Colo.1990); Rath, 44 P.3d at 1038. This requirement means more than a statement by the prosecutor or the court that the “other acts evidence is independent of the intermediate inference that the defendant has a bad character.” The prosecution must “articulate a precise evidential hypothesis by which a material fact can be permissibly inferred from the prior act independent of the use forbidden by C.R.E. 404(b).” Spoto, 795 P.2d at 1319 (emphasis added). The same is true for the trial court. Spoto provides a specific analytical framework to evaluate whether uncharged misconduct evidence should be admitted under 404(b).
Spoto was a murder case in which the defendant and his friend entered the victim’s bedroom in the middle of the night and the defendant subsequently shot the victim in the neck, killing him. The defendant did not dispute that he shot the victim but argued that the gun fired accidentally in the course of a struggle. 795 P.2d at 1316.
The other act at issue in that case occurred a few weeks earlier in the defendant’s house. The defendant and the same friend went into the bedroom of two other housemates at night to determine if the housemates had taken some missing items in the house. According to one of the housemates, the defendant woke him up by poking him in the ribs with the gun, pulling his left arm outward, and pressing a gun to his head. The trial court admitted the uncharged act without analysis. Id. at 1316-17.
We noted that whether the uncharged act was logically relevant independent of the inference prohibited by 404(b) was a “difficult question.” Id. at 1319. We then identified the forbidden character inference that might occur: the prior gun incident shows that the defendant is a person who draws guns on people intentionally and therefore he must have intentionally shot the victim in the charged case simply because he is the type to draw a gun. We next compared the value of this prior act to prove that the defendant committed the charged crime. The prosecution offered two different theories, which we ultimately rejected. More importantly for our purposes here, we assessed the comparative evidentiary power of the prior act to prove that the defendant committed the charged crime with its evidentiary tendency to prove his bad character. Id. at 1319-20.
We reasoned that the prosecution’s first theory had little probative value, that is, its admission would do little to prove that this defendant committed the charged murder. The prior gun incident did not demonstrate the ability of the defendant to use a “martial maneuver,” as the prosecution argued. Rather, it established only that the defendant was capable of putting a gun to the head of an awakening person. In addition, there was no evidence that the murder involved a “martial maneuver.” We noted that this prior incident did not suggest that the defendant draws a gun when he intends to use it because he pointed it and failed to pull the trigger. Id. at 1319.
Similarly, we reasoned that the prosecution’s second theory did little to prove that the defendant killed the victim because the uncharged gun incident and the charged act were not sufficiently similar enough to infer that it was not an accident, as claimed by the defense. For the prosecution’s theory to rebut the defendant’s claim of accident, it would have needed evidence of uncharged crimes, i.e., that the defendant had killed several people by shooting them in the neck. Because the uncharged act constituted weak evidence of the crime charged, we concluded that the uncharged incident was not logically relevant independent of the forbidden character inference. Id. at 1319-20.
Thus, as we reasoned in Spoto, “independent of the intermediate inference” meant comparing the probative value of the inference to be made between the uncharged acts and the crimes charged to ensure that the *1007impermissible inference does not significantly outweigh the permissible or relevant non-character inference. We focused on the uncharged misconduct because its persuasive value to prove the charged crime was so weak that the jury would be unfairly swayed against the defendant by the fact that the defendant was the type of person — because of his prior use of a gun — to commit the crime charged.
To admit uncharged misconduct, a court must compare the strength of the non-character, relevant inference, that is, the eviden-tiary power that proof of the uncharged crime possesses to prove the charged crime, with the power of the impermissible inference, that is, the evidentiary power that the uncharged acts possess to unfairly influence the jury’s truth-determination process. See Miguel A. Mendez & Edward J. Imwinkel-ried, People v. Ewoldt: The California Su- ’ preme Court’s About-Face on the Plan Theory for Admitting Evidence of an Accused’s Uncharged Misconduct, 28 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. 473, 502 (1995)(comparing the value of the evidence as proof of the proper inference to the value of the evidence as proof of an improper, or character inference). This weighing or comparison process is critical to the central purpose of C.R.E. 404(b), which is to admit relevant and probative evidence of guilt while excluding uncharged acts that are likely to create unfairness in the jury’s assessment of the charged crime. When engaging in this process of comparing the relative evidentiary strength of the relevant non-character inference to the non-relevant character inference, under-inclusiveness can lead to the exclusion of material evidence proving guilt while over-inelusiveness can lead to a substantial risk of unfair prejudice:
Under-inclusiveness leads to the exclusion of too much relevant evidence, making the truth-determination function of the trial more difficult to serve. Over-inclusiveness creates great danger of unfair prejudice, which can lead both to inaccurate truth-determination and fundamental unfairness.
Leonard, 34 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. at 441. Because of the obvious dangers of being either under-inclusive or over-inclusive, a trial court must analyze the value of the uncharged misconduct by carefully following Spoto: describing the uncharged misconduct evidence with specificity, identifying the forbidden character inference and the permissible, relevant, non-character inference and determining whether the permissible inference is truly independent of the impermissible inference.4
Turning to this case, we must ask: does the evidence of the defendant’s fantasies provide a strong inference that this defendant committed this crime? Does it provide a powerful inference that the defendant is an evil person? And, what are the relative strengths of these two inferences — one permissible and the other not? What do a thousand pages of writings and drawings, depicting scenes of general violence, the majority of which have no semblance to the crime charged, more powerfully suggest, that the defendant killed this victim or, that the defendant is a person with violent and antisocial fantasies? The majority neither asks nor answers these questions.
From the beginning of this ease until the verdict, the defendant’s uncharged fantasies dominated. For example, in opening statement, the prosecutor told the jury: “This case is very different than most murder cases. It is not a case typically that you find of greed and anger and revenge. It is a case of an individual acting out a fantasy life.”
The prosecutor ended his rebuttal closing argument by urging the jury to convict the defendant because his fantasies (the drawings and stories, which were physically placed in paper evidentiary bags) proved that he committed this crime:
Please take the time to look at those drawings, read the narratives, study this evidence. The evidence is there. Sometimes it’s hard to find. Sometimes you have to do a little thinking as to how the defendant could draw something like that unless he knew how it happened. Please look and read, study, dig into the paper bags. The evidence is there.
*1008In addition, throughout the prosecution’s case, at least 90 slides of the defendant’s drawings and writings were displayed to the jury.5
On review, the majority dismisses this evidence. In response to the prosecution’s key motive theory of “sexual homicide,” the majority concludes that although the uncharged misconduct evidence may appear unrelated to the crimes charged, it was really part of a common scheme, “hatched by a warped criminal mind.” Majority op. at 998. For other purposes, the majority concludes that “the evidentiary hypotheses are independent of the prohibited propensity inference.” Majority op. at 1000-1001 (reviewing the evidence to show plan, preparation, deliberation, intent and knowledge). In effect, the majority simply restates the “magic words” found in 404(b) without a specific analysis of the impact of this evidence.6 Spoto and the foundations of 404(b) require more than a mere recitation that the evidence is independent of the non-relevant, forbidden character inference.
The uncharged acts here consist of over twenty notebooks and folders with over a thousand pages of drawings and writings by the defendant. From these pictures and stories, two disturbing patterns emerge.
First, contrary to the majority’s assertion that there are only a “few drawings and writings that are nothing more than evidence of Defendant’s violent nature,” Majority op. at 1002, there are literally hundreds of images and narratives that depict gruesome violence against men, children and animals that have no relationship to the charges. Multiple scenes of violence are oftentimes on each page, with various methods and means of killing and torturing victims, including shooting, hanging, drowning, and gassing. Narratives include stories that are often hundreds of pages long, single-spaced, describing death, despair and destruction.
A small sample of the drawings and writings, and what they depict, illustrates the nature of the uncharged misconduct admitted to prove that the defendant stabbed the victim in the back with a knife, dragged her into an open field, and cut her nipple and vagina:
Babies or children dying horrible deaths: heads blown off; heated up in a microwave; thrown through a window; thrown into moving propellers; exploding; fed through a meat grinder; grenade exploding in the mouth; and shredding. Some of the parents of these children appear to be trying to save them, but to no avail;
Various animals, usually cats and birds, drowned, put in microwaves, eaten alive, run over with lawnmowers, shot and fed through meat grinders;
Multiple torture chambers showing people dying by suffocating, drowning, fires, being smashed and pulled apart;
Over a hundred pages of narratives describing nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, including a focus on World War II Germany, radiation fallout and how the body dies in the event of such a war.
Second, in addition to these writings and drawings that illustrate methods and means of death that fail to demonstrate any semblance to the crime charged, the notebooks and folders illustrate a pattern of extreme racial and ethnic prejudice and hatred towards historically disadvantaged groups. There are numerous bigoted and racist drawings and narratives regarding the disabled, *1009Jews, “Spies,” “Fags,” “Gooks” and “Niggers,” that are contained throughout the exhibits, including:
In a homework assignment about gaining understanding about people who are “hard of hearing,” the defendant writes: “Personally I don’t care about the deaf. I don’t know anyone who’s deaf so I don’t worry about it”;
Pushing multiple people in wheelchairs down cliffs;
A Nazi concentration camp showing people caught in barbed wire, being electrocuted and whipped by an SS officer, doctors pulling out intestines, and two signs saying “Welcome, Each and Every God-damn Jew” and “Kill the Jew”;
Numerous missiles about to be launched with Jews and Mexicans, including children, chained to the side by their ankles; “Mario the Mexican Monkey” sitting in a tree with a human face and a sombrero, about to be electrocuted, hanged, and hunted during “Monkey Open Season”; Texas Border patrol shooting Mexicans;
A person shooting a gun with the caption “The Cure for AIDS”;
“Gay fags” being shot by Rambo at close range;
“I nailed the Gook first, filling him with o holes. ‘Ooooh,’ one of the Reds moaned, the Gook. ‘Oh man,’ I said with an evil grin. ‘Of all the fuckers to still be alive it had to be you.’ ”
“Pete and his self were the only two white people in the Club the rest were Chicano or Oriental. He chuckled as he decided that was why everyone was ignoring him.” He later kills all the Chinese club owners and jokes how he might go into the Chinese restaurant business.
“Im not prejudice, I hate all them black fuckin Nigers the same”;
KKK shooting a large automatic gun, thinking “NIGER”
In my view the fantasy evidence strongly and overwhelmingly provided powerful suggestions of the impermissible, non-relevant inference — that the defendant was a person with an evil and bad character.
Having concluded that the impermissible purpose of this evidence was powerful, I turn to evaluate the strength of the relevant, non-character inference that links the defendant to this murder. I conclude that it constitutes very weak probative evidence linking him to the crime. This is so even though some of the defendant’s fantasies, particularly those reflecting the hatred of women,7 blitz attacks and piquerism, are arguably admissible.
First, the writings and drawings are not even “acts,” but merely reflect, for the most part, a 15 year-old’s fantasies.
Second, not one of these 1000 drawings and narratives concerns this victim personally. None of these drawings or narratives reflects the manner in which the victim was killed. For example, there is no picture of, or a story about, a woman being stabbed in the back or having her nipple excised. Clearly, any uncharged conduct on the defendant’s part connecting him to this victim or the way she was killed would be highly relevant to prove motive or plan and would be admissible to prove guilt. For example, in People v. Snyder, 874 P.2d 1076, 1080 (Colo.1994), we found that the defendant’s prior sexual misconduct with the victim was admissible to prove he committed the charged sexual assaults because it was the same victim and the circumstances of the prior sexual misconduct and the charged assaults were similar. And in People v. Janes, 942 P.2d 1331, 1336 (Colo.App.1997), the court of appeals found that the circumstances involving prior uncharged sexual conduct with a different victim were so similar to the circumstances of the charged assaults to be admissible. In the Janes case, the victims were all male and the same age, both assaults occurred in the defendant’s house with his wife and others present, the defendant engaged in the same sexual behavior including giving the victims hickeys, and the defendant offered *1010the victims money but gave the same warnings. Id.
Third, aside from the “hatred of women” motive, there is no articulated motive that the defendant’s fantasies of violence against men, children and animals tend to prove why this defendant would have killed this particular victim. The drawings and writings do not provide “the moving force” which would impel this defendant to a “definite result,” i.e., the defendant targeted this victim to kill. See Imwinkelried, Uncharged Misconduct Evidence § 3:15, at 78.
Fourth, the majority relies upon the prosecution’s expert to link the defendant’s fantasies to this crime, in spite of the failure of the fantasies to show a link to this specific victim and this specific crime. As the majority correctly notes, the trial court premised the admissibility of the narratives and drawings on the expert’s testimony to prove the stated exceptions to C.R.E. 404(b). See Majority op. at 985-988.
When the expert’s analysis is generally accepted by the relevant scientific community, courts should find that the evidence is relevant for its non-character or motive purpose. Any analysis regarding whether a homicide is a “sexual homicide” is generally accepted by the scientific community and thus would be relevant for non-character purposes. On the other hand, where there is genuine scientific debate over the validity of the expert’s propositions, the non-character purpose of the uncharged acts is much weaker and the danger of use by the forbidden character inference much greater. See Leonard, 34 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. at 531 (the existence of a “genuine debate in the scientific community about the validity of the syndrome or condition supposedly represented by the relevant behavior or state of mind” weighs against the probative value of expert testimony regarding the relevant behavior or state of mind).8
Here, the prosecution expert’s analysis purported to find that the fantasies of admitted sexual perpetrators were similar to those of the defendant, but that analysis has not yet been accepted by the relevant scientific community because it has not been validated. The defense’s expert, who has testified on behalf of the prosecution in eighty percent of his cases, stated that the link between deviant sexual fantasies and sexual homicide does not enjoy acceptance because the few studies that have been done all involve convicted offenders who talked about their past fantasies and past acts, the research is new, sample sizes are small, and the studies fail to use control groups. The lack of control groups is particularly telling because the scientific community does not know the percentage of those in the general population who engage in violent and sexual fantasies but who do not commit sexual offenses. In addition, the defense expert testified that current scientific journals have reported that the relationship between sexual fantasies and sexual homicides is tentative and opined that no conclusions can be drawn linking fantasies to conduct. Indeed, the inconclusive nature of this research is apparent when one of the two studies relied upon by the prosecution’s expert is also relied upon for the proposition that “normal people,” that is, persons who do not commit criminal behavior, also engage in deviant sexual fantasies. Thus, while the testimony of the prosecution’s expert was admissible under C.R.E. 702, as explained by the majority, his theory of how the defendant’s fantasies tied this defendant to this crime constitute, at best, minimal evidence of such a crime.
Taken as a whole, the defendant’s writings and drawings establish a minimal evidentiary inference connecting him to the death of Peggy Hettrick. Although some of the drawings and writings depict hatred against women and are admissible, there is nothing written or drawn about her personally, about the specific means of her death, or about the motive explaining why she was chosen. The mere fact that an expert was permitted to theorize about the defendant’s fantasies does not strengthen this weak evidentiary link. *1011The logical relevance of the defendant’s uncharged fantasies is minimal when compared to the overwhelming power of these fantasies to depict the defendant as an evil and bad person.
The majority overlooks the grave danger of unfair prejudice that occurred here — ’that this case was tried and the prosecution’s theory relied extensively upon the defendant’s bad character. A jury might reasonably infer, from over a thousand pages of these types of drawings and writings — contained in over twenty notebooks and emphasized repeatedly by the prosecution — that the defendant was a repulsive and violent boy with grisly fantasies, who should be punished just because of these fantasies. Even assuming that some of the drawings and writings would be admissible, there are hundreds and hundreds of pages that have nothing to do with this case.
The admission of these hundreds and hundreds of pages, was not, as the majority asserts, harmless error. The inquiry for harmless error is whether the error “substantially influenced the verdict or affected the fairness of the trial proceedings.” People v. Gaffney, 769 P.2d 1081, 1088 (Colo.1989).
The majority primarily relies on the Gaff-ney case to support its conclusion that while there are a “few drawings and writings that [were] nothing more than evidence of [the defendant’s] violent nature” and that while the defendant’s prejudices were exhibited by the “sporadic use of ethnic slurs,” this inadmissible evidence did not substantially influence the verdict or impair the fairness of the trial. Majority op. at 1002, 1003-1004. To reach its conclusion, the majority reasons that the jury, having already been exposed to admissible, violent evidence in a first degree murder case, would not be substantially influenced by “similar images of violence” and even if some of the violent and racist writings and drawings were admitted, the “improperly admitted pages were not emphasized or relied on by the prosecution in presenting its case.” Id. at 1003. I disagree.
The overwhelming volume of inadmissible and prejudicial evidence in this case, portraying the defendant as an extremely violent and hate-filled racist, distinguishes this case from Gaffney. In Gaffney, this court found that a pediatrician’s testimony concerning the character of a child-victim was inadmissible but held that it was harmless error in light of the entire record. Gaffney, 769 P.2d at 1082. Gaffney, however, involved one inadmissible statement of one witness: “This history is very believable.” Id. at 1083. This case is factually distinct from Gaffney: there are hundreds of pages of inadmissible writings and drawings and numerous examples of highly inflammatory and prejudicial material that were spread throughout trial testimony and exhibits.
Because the jury had already been exposed to violent evidence in a first degree murder case, the majority reasons that the jury could not be substantially influenced by evidence of similar,9 inadmissible violence. As a general proposition, I believe this statement cannot stand. The prejudicial impact of images showing babies blown up in microwaves or put through meat grinders paints a picture for the jury that not only is the defendant violent but also that he is despicable, hate-filled and sadistic, comparable to only a few of histories worst pariahs. The notion that juries can be conditioned to violent, inadmissible, prejudicial evidence in cases where violence is admissible must and should be rejected. It means that in such eases, a rational jury will never be substantially influenced by irrelevant, inadmissible and prejudicial violent acts of the defendant despite the negative impact and the powerful prejudice engendered by these acts. Thus, an appellate court in such cases would never be in a position to find reversible error to rectify an unfair criminal trial.
The majority’s assurance that the prosecution did not emphasize or rely on the inadmissible evidence, described, in part, as the “sporadic use of ethnic slurs,” mischaracter-*1012izes the nature of the inadmissible evidence and the trial proceedings.10
The prosecution showed the jury numerous images drafted by the defendant that glorified the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi party and killing and tortures of people based on their racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds, sexual orientation and physical limitations. Overwhelming images and narratives that advocate mutilating and maiming people based solely on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability should not be overlooked and approved as “sporadic ethnic slurs.”
Not only are these violent and hate-filled examples spread throughout the writings and drawings, the prosecution made no effort to guard against their prejudicial impact and, in fact, emphasized some of them to the jury. As noted earlier, the prosecutor in opening and closing remarks stressed the significance of the defendant’s fantasies, some of which contained blatantly inadmissible examples of the defendant’s racist and bigoted attitudes, as well as inadmissible violent, uncharged acts. The prosecution highlighted many of these inadmissible, inflammatory examples through the testimony of Lieutenant Broder-ick because they were next to a drawing, or part of a narrative, that the prosecution argued as being proof that the defendant committed this murder.
Lieutenant Broderick testified about Exhibit 97(16), shown as a slide, and blown-up for the benefit of the jury, because it depicted a “surgeon performing surgery,.,. with a large survival knife” on a patient whose “legs and arms are restrained.” That drawing, however, marked with a .color tab by the prosecution, depicts the Nazi death camp welcoming “Each and Every God-damn Jew” and the caption “Kill the Jew.” Lieutenant Broderick also testified about another slide, blown-up for the benefit of the jury, depicting Exhibit 97(23). While Exhibit 97(23) shows doctors using saws, machetes and knives on people, it also shows a doctor filing a gun with the caption “I’ve found the cure for AIDS.” Lieutenant Broderick also testified about Exhibit 92, which contains a narrative with tabbed pages with multiple references to “spies” and “the niger” who says “dis way.”
As a result, unlike the majority, I cannot say with fair assurance that these racist and bigoted depictions, when considered in addition to the defendant’s writings and drawings of gruesome and loathsome violence unrelated to the charged crime, did not substantially influence the verdict or impair the fairness of the proceedings. The explicit admission of these heinous images and descriptions, highlighted by the prosecution, “cast an irreparable cloud of condemnation over the defendant” and assured the unfairness of these proceedings. See Callis v. People, 692 P.2d 1045, 1053 (Colo.1984).
Conclusion
By failing to engage in a specific Spoto weighing analysis, the majority approves an “over-inclusive” approach to C.R.E. 404(b) which encourages the indiscriminate admission of an accused’s uncharged misdeeds. I fear the weakening of the Rule’s purpose, which is to assure that our criminal system punishes someone for his acts and not for the kind of person he is. As the record reveals, the wholesale admission of all of the defendant’s fantasies prove too great a danger of *1013unfair prejudice to permit this conviction to stand. Hence, I would reverse it.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice MULLARKEY and Justice MARTINEZ join in this dissent.

.The tendency of juries to overvalue other acts evidence is supported by empirical studies. See James E. Beaver & Steven L. Marques, A Proposal to Modify the Rule on Criminal Conviction Impeachment, 58 Temp. L.Q. 585, 602-03 (1985)(summarizing the findings of several empirical studies on jury behavior regarding a defendant's prior record and finding that "the distaste jurors may have for the defendant’s past activities may also tend to distort their perception of the degree of independent evidence necessary to meet the prosecution's burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and concluding that social scientists' studies reveal that “when an individual is told negative things about another person, that individual is going to assume other negative things.”).

. See Harry Kalven, Jr. & Hans Zeisel, The American Jury 160-61, 178-79 (1966); Comment, Other Crimes Evidence at Trial: Of Balancing and Other Matters, 70 Yale L.J. 763, 777 (1961) ("The jurors almost universally used defendant's record to conclude that he was a bad man and hence was more likely than not guilty of the crime for which he was then standing trial.”)(internal citations omitted).

. See Miguel A. Mendez, California's New Law on Character Evidence: Evidence Code Section 352 and the Impact of Recent Psychological Studies, 31 UCLA L.Rev. 1003, 1049 (1984) ("Evidence of specific acts of misconduct used to prove the accused’s guilt ... is simply too unrepresentative to support the inferences jurors are likely to draw.”).

. Although I focus on the third prong, other acts evidence must also satisfy the remaining relevancy prongs of the Spoto test to be admitted. See Rath, 44 P.3d at 1038.

. The prosecutor’s closing argument emphasized the overwhelming number of drawings and writings:
These are excerpts of hundreds and hundreds of pages of narratives ... about brutal killings and death and dismemberment. [The defendant] was fantasizing about knives; 186 references in the materials to knives. He was fantasizing about death; 291 references. He was fantasizing about blitz attacks, surprise attacks from behind, mostly to strangers; 126 times. He was fantasizing about stabbing or slicing or disemboweling or eviscerating; 145 times.
This is a kid who wrote hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of gory, grizzly [sic] death scenes about torture, about killing.
[The defendant] fantasized obsessively. I would submit to you he fantasized compulsively. He did it in class when he was supposed to be doing other things. Look at the numbers in this case of drawings and pages of narratives.

. The majority states that "the prosecution appropriately limited its use of the other acts evidence.” Majority op. at 998, n. 4. However, the record reveals that the prosecution emphasized the defendant’s fantasies at every opportunity.

. As a member of the hated group, the female victim was a specific target. See Leonard, 34 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. at 453 (“Hatred ... can be directed toward a single individual or toward a group of people sharing some common characteristic. Even this type of generalized motive is not the same as character.’’).

. For example, many courts are divided with respect to the admissibility of evidence of battered child syndrome, partly because of uncertainty about the scientific basis for its existence. See Annotation, Admissibility of Evidence of Battered Child Syndrome on Issue of Self-Defense, 22 A.L.R.5th 787, 793-94 (2000).

. Parenthetically, I note that that the inadmissible evidence was not "similar’’ to the charged crime.

. The majority contends that the trial court would likely have required the prosecution to redact the inflammatory material had the defendant only requested the court to do so. Majority op. at 1003. Under a plain error analysis, the admission of numerous inflammatory narratives and drawings, emphasized by trial exhibits and the testimony of Lieutenant Broderick, undermined the fundamental fairness of this trial and cast serious doubt on the reliability of the conviction. Wilson v. People, 743 P.2d 415, 420 (Colo.1987). Even so, the majority fails to acknowledge that the defendant repeatedly objected to the admission of the writings and drawings under C.R.E. 403 before and during the trial. The
failure of the defense to request the redaction, however, does not relieve the trial court from its independent obligation to ensure a fair trial by preventing the admission of such inflammatory, irrelevant and grossly prejudicial evidence in the first place. Harris v. People, 888 P.2d 259, 264 (Colo.l995)(finding that a court must ensure the defendant’s right to a "fair verdict, free from the influence or poison of evidence which should never have been admitted, and the admission of which arouses passions and prejudices which tend to destroy the fairness and impartiality of the jury.”)(citing Oaks v. People, 150 Colo. 64, 68, 371 P.2d 443, 447 (1962)).