Court Opinion

ID: 9594039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:26:26.486977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:48.450864
License: Public Domain

Hoekstra, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority because I disagree with the conclusion reached in section n of that opinion. In all other respects, I concur in the opinion of the majority.
In section II, the majority concludes that the prior bad acts limiting instruction must be given upon request without regard to who was the proponent of the bad acts testimony. I believe that this conclusion is flawed because it ignores the context for which the limiting instruction was created, that being the prosecution’s introduction of evidence of a defendant’s prior bad acts pursuant to MRE 404(b). The majority opinion correctly sets forth the legal framework that guards a defendant from inappropriate and unfair usage of prior bad acts testimony generally. Those safeguards ensure that when the prosecution seeks to admit such testimony, the testimony meets the requirements of relevance, admissibility based upon a recognized purpose, and that the probative value of the ¡evidence outweigh its prejudicial effect. Before the decision by the majority today, only after testimony of bad acts offered by the prosecution survived this rigorous test for admissibility was a defendant entitled to request the limiting instruction at issue in this case.
Now, however, the majority has extended the right to request a limiting instruction to situations where a *402defendant interjects his own prior bad acts into evidence. This, despite the fact that a defendant may introduce the evidence without the prosecution having any opportunity to object to its admissibility on any basis. In my view, this extension of a defendant’s right to a limiting instruction is unwarranted. I would conclude that a defendant who introduces bad acts evidence is not entitled to the same limiting instruction to which he would have been otherwise entitled upon request had the evidence been offered by the prosecution pursuant to MRE 404(b), because the purpose for which the evidence is offered is unrelated to a typical MRE 404(b) issue, and because the evidence’s admissibility is not scrutinized by the same standards.
The majority relies on the potential prejudice to a defendant that may result from such testimony. However, unlike the situation where it is admitted by the prosecution pursuant to MRE 404(b), a defendant who introduces such evidence controls the nature and extent of the testimony. The defendant is in a position to gauge the effect of the testimony and argue its proper usage. It seems to me that this can and should be done without the benefit of a limiting instruction where the defendant is the proponent of the prior bad acts evidence. Accordingly, I would find no error in the trial court’s refusal to give the jury the requested limiting instruction and would affirm defendant’s conviction.