Court Opinion

ID: 9553661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:33:15.309373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:01.465617
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority assumptively claims Peter Gezzi attacked G.G.’s credibility, in part, by simply presenting the defense that he “was innocent of the crime charged.” 1 This audacity to maintain his innocence permitted the prosecutor to bring onto the witness stand a third party to recite prior bad acts by Gezzi. This holding permits a prosecutor, faced with a weak case and an accused citizen with the audacity to proclaim his or her innocence, to open the floodgates to drown the reputation of the accused in a brackish litany of prior bad acts. Prior bad acts should not be used to grease the wheels of justice simply to crush the accused who maintain their innocence to criminal charges.
I would feel considerably more comfortable if Gezzi had been convicted on relevant evidence of his commission of the charged offenses. In dissent, I claim Gezzi should have been charged with incest with his older daughter if her testimony to that effect was allowed in open court when he was being tried for such acts with his younger daughter — then he would have been afforded a realistic opportunity to defend himself through effective counsel. I cannot justify the admissibility of evidence on the basis that our common constitutional right to defend was exercised by this particular defendant. I dissent.
It is generally stated to be the basic foundation of English law that the common law rule excluding evidence of other crimes, wrongs and acts originated in the Treason Act of 1695 “to destroy the reign of terror of the Star Chamber.” Reed, Trial by Propensity: Admission of Other Criminal Acts Evidenced in Federal Criminal Trials, 50 U.Cin.L.Rev. 713, 717 (1981).2
Professor Reed states:
*979Since the close of the eighteenth century, the propensity rule has been one of the fundamental restraints on prosecuto-rial proof in American criminal trials. The propensity rule excludes evidence offered to establish the accused’s disposition to commit crime. The rule had its roots in the accusative, as opposed to inquisitorial, nature of the Anglo-American criminal process. Under an accusative system, the state must establish that the accused did some act forbidden by law. In contrast, an, inquisitorial process assumes the accused committed the crime and imposes upon him the burden of establishing his innocence. The courts admit evidence of the accused’s prior criminal activity which the accused must also overcome.
* * * The federal rules’ expansion of the scope of prosecutorial use of evidence of other crimes and the federal courts’ willingness to admit such evidence is subtly transforming the American criminal justice system from an accusative to an inquisitorial process.
Id. at 713-14 (emphasis added and footnotes omitted).
Anticipating the prosecutorial enthusiasm for bad acts evidence, Justice Jackson wrote in 1948:
Courts that follow the common-law tradition almost unanimously have come to disallow resort by the prosecution to any kind of evidence of a defendant’s evil character to establish a probability of his guilt. Not that the law invests the defendant with a presumption of good character, Greer v. United States, 245 U.S. 559 [38 S.Ct. 209, 62 L.Ed. 469 (1918)] but it simply closes the whole matter of character, disposition and reputation on the prosecution’s case-in-chief. The state may not show defendant’s prior trouble with the law, specific criminal acts, or ill name among his neighbors, even though such facts might logically be persuasive that he is by propensity a probable perpetrator of the crime. The inquiry is not rejected because character is irrelevant; on the contrary, it is said to weigh too much with the jury and to so overper-suade them as to prejudge one with a bad general record and deny him a fair opportunity to defend against a particular charge. The overriding policy of excluding such evidence, despite its admitted probative value, is the practical experience that its disallowance tends to prevent confusion of issues, unfair surprise and undue prejudice.
Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 475-76, 69 S.Ct. 213, 218-19, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948) (footnotes omitted).
Committed to a jurisprudence which judges an accused citizen by actual evidence of the real events, I reject this trend of trial by propensity. The usage of bad acts evidence in Wyoming, outlined in Pena v. State, 780 P.2d 316 (Wyo.1989) (Urbigkit, J., dissenting), is no more relevant to direct proof than is the use in this case of an older sister’s recitation of her father’s prior inappropriate behavior. See similarly Brown v. State, 736 P.2d 1110 (Wyo.1987) (Urbigkit, J., dissenting).
I recognize the foundations of our democratic society are thinly anchored in preservation of constitutional rights and historical values which, once weakened, may not survive attitude and exasperation under the pervasively confining and accelerative existence of these modern times. Compromises for efficiency to deny individual justice can destroy the system before the weakening of the structure is actually observed. I cannot acclimate to either “liberal rules,”3 by which admission of all bad acts extrinsic occurrence evidence is the *980mode and denial without defining principle is the exception, or our retention of a facade that admission is improper unless justified by exception. The termite-like exceptions will devour the infested structure. Either way, nothing of the historical superstructure remains.
Consequently, it is appropriate to continue, at least for now, to clutch to the explications of criminal law that conviction of an offense should be proved by evidence directly related to the events of the alleged commission as intrinsic occurrence evidence. Adjudication has not yet moved properly to search out “extrinsic activity,” United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898 (5th Cir.1978), cert. denied 440 U.S. 920, 99 S.Ct. 1244, 59 L.Ed.2d 472 (1979), as an avenue of proof which reflects adversely on the character of the defendant regardless of whether that activity might give rise to criminal liability. Due process is circumvented and our right to an impartial jury trial when charged is invalidated. I reaffirm what the dissent a decade ago said in Beechum, 582 F.2d at 926-27:
At the heart of the majority's error in this case is its mistaken placement of the spotlight on the Federal Rules of Evidence, instead of where it rightfully belongs — on the criminal trial of a human being. The majority places the vague and uninformed stage hands of the drama — the Federal Rules of Evidence — in the center of the stage, and pushes the principles of a fair criminal trial into weak, whispered supporting roles off to the edge of the proscenium wall.
Additionally, we should understand the basic principle of our law is stated in the first clause of W.R.E. 404(a). What follows are exceptions to be justified in reason, logic and justice with the exercise of directed discretion for application only when appropriate. “Evidence of a 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, * * W.R.E. 404(a). Admissibility of bad acts evidence under W.R.E. 404(b) and 609 is perhaps the major procedural inquiry in the massive volume of present criminal appeals.4 For reasons better restricted to political science and sociology than dissenting opinion review, it is apparent the use of this character of evidence will accelerate with observable social problems. Our historical standards of what evidence is proper for the prosecution to prove its case now seem like soft soil beneath a tidal wave.5 The problem with the Wyoming Rules of Evidence, which is the same problem infecting the Federal Rules of Evidence — specifically F.R.E. 403 and 404(b) — was recognized almost before they became effective. “Given the wide latitude for judicial discretion in admitting evidence, a reviewing court has little opportunity to question a trial judge’s decision to admit such information.” Symposium, The Federal Rules of Evidence, 71 NW U.L. Rev. 634, 644 (1976).
My particular problem with the majority is not so much the other person sexual assault testimony exception6 as it is the contended exceptions seem to have mutated to become the rule for all cases, removing any direct deterrents to admissibility of *981propensity and character evidence in all criminal cases.
With the handwriting on the wall, those jurists dedicated to the proposition that guilt or innocence should be determined by the actual evidence of real facts have begun sounding cries of alarm as the current trend to slipshod prosecution by bad acts allegations.7 The great care requirement authenticated in recent federal court review is uncontrollably not evidenced here by this liberal Wyoming attitude for other bad acts prosecution evidence. United States v. Colon, 880 F.2d 650, 656 (2d Cir.1989); United States v. Brown, 880 F.2d 1012 (9th Cir.1989).
Perhaps some basic considerations within W.R.E. 403, 404(b) and 609 will call us back to our ancestral home in law. We first need to understand the nature of the basic charge which is to find a system faithful to our traditional value of conviction of a crime by proof of the elements without infusion of character and propensity prejudice. Perhaps the march away from the historical Anglo-American concept of criminal justice is irreversible, but at least within the body of case law, some relatively direct and understandable concepts could deter total extinguishment. Each of the suggestions have support in basic case reviews and, as a combination, the totality seems unavailable in present Wyoming process.
In analysis of these cases, the trial tribunal must first decide whether actual W.R.E. 404(b) evidence is presented. The phraseology in Crozier v. State, 723 P.2d 42 (Wyo.1986) may have been improvident since that first question is whether the proffered facts relate to the course of conduct or history of the event which serves to develop the natural development of the facts. Id. at 49. If the evidence fits within this field of examination, it is not bad acts evidence. Justice v. State, 775 P.2d 1002 (Wyo.1989); Miller v. State, 755 P.2d 855 (Wyo.1988); Scadden v. State, 732 P.2d 1036 (Wyo.1987). Consequently, in a technical sense, course of conduct or history of the occurrence evidence is not an exception to the bad acts, other crimes, wrongs or acts within the character of extrinsic offense evidence. United States v. Leavitt, 878 F.2d 1329 (11th Cir.1989). Course of conduct evidence to be applied as intrinsic offense evidence involves those events from which the contended offense arises and is to be tested by á much broader arena of court discretion generally defined by the sound discretion of the court.8 Ar*982nold v. Mountain West Farm Bureau Mut. Ins. Co., Inc., 707 P.2d 161 (Wyo. 1985); Matter of MLM, 682 P.2d 982 (Wyo. 1984); People v. Melton, 44 Cal.3d 713, 244 Cal.Rptr. 867, 750 P.2d 741, cert. denied — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 329, 102 L.Ed.2d 346 (1988).
Obvious examples frequently litigated but almost never with success include objections to photographs of the victim, Mun-den v. State, 698 P.2d 621 (Wyo.1985); State v. Leavitt, 116 Idaho 285, 775 P.2d 599 (1989), autopsy reports and granting or denying of a request to view the site of the alleged crime. Cases, rules and discretion applicable to the intrinsic evidence course of conduct should not be applied to the much more confined bad acts extrinsic offense evidence of W.R.E. 404(b) and convictions of W.R.E. 609. Scadden, 732 P.2d 1036. See however, Lauthern v. State, 769 P.2d 350, 357 (Wyo.1989). It should also be noted before we address true W.R.E. 404(b) evidence, such as testimony of another victim, that the testimony of the same victim is not normally exception evidence within W.R.E. 404(b). King v. State, 545 So.2d 375 (Fla.App.1989).9 Testimony of the victim about a continued course of criminal behavior fits comfortably within the non-W. R.E. 404(b) definition to be applied to the evidence. Historically, this is the basis that the victim in sexual assaults was entitled to testify about other events and the general circumstances of the relationship with the accused. It was when the non-W. R.E. 404(b) rules applicable to the same victim were stretched to include other victims and admissibility of their testimony as a true W.R.E. 404(b) evidence exception that present tensions developed which attack the basic principles of conviction by proof of a charged event and not bad character or propensity prejudicial offerings for jury consumption.10
Consequently, the trial court is entitled to determine whether the contested evidence is intrinsic: full story — course of conduct. With that determination, no deterrent exists to admissibility except those generally vested in the court relating to introduction of all evidence including relevance, repetitiveness, unduly prejudicial nature or even just a waste of time for presentation and jury review.11
■The bad acts evidence litigation as the pervasive present dispute of our judiciary today comes forward with the extrinsic offense evidence and it is in this arena where the battleground is located in developing and applying rules of evidence for trial. It is also this present court’s “liberal attitude” for introduction of the extrinsic offense evidence to which my numerous dissents have been addressed as founded in a simple determinant that conviction should occur on evidence of the offense charged and not propensity, bad character or unfavorable history.
Once the trial court has made the first exclusion and found extrinsic offense evidence presented, then certain rules and standards should be applied to minimize unnecessary erosion of the endangered notion that guilt should be proved by evidence of the occurrence. Systematically, these should include:
1. The decision on introduction of W.R.E. 404(b) and 609 evidence should be addressed by pretrial submission or motion in limine before trial. C. Wright & K. Graham, Federal Practice and Procedure: Evidence § 5224 at 320-21 (1978); 2 Weinstein’s Evidence, United States Rules II 404[19] at 404-163 (1989); 3 Weinstein’s Evidence, supra, II 609[05] at 609-95 (prior convictions). See Newell v. State, 548 P.2d 8 (Wyo.1976). See also State v. Howell, *983226 Mont. 148, 734 P.2d 214 (1987), where a notice before trial is required.
2. The court should ask first of the proponent of the evidence in criminal cases: (a) what is the evidence presented, how and by whom;12 (b) what is the specific contended issue of trial to which it will be addressed;13 and (c) what will that evidence prove on this contested issue in addition to propensity, character and bad reputation.14
3. The opponent should address reasons for objection and assert particular prejudice anticipated at the pretrial session.15
4. The decision then to be made by the trial court, after fidelity to the balancing requirement of W.R.E. 403 and 609, is whether the prejudicial effect outweighs the probative value.16
5. The trial court should make a finding justifying admissibility or rejection by a specific determination of the contested issue to be addressed and what probative value, if any, is to be provided by the evidence. This is so whether the ruling is made or reserved for a time of attempted presentation at trial when evidence is rejected or a decision to admit is made.17
6. An appropriate limiting instruction should be given at the time of introduction to confine the jury consideration of the evidence to the purpose or intent for which admission was permitted in accord with the court’s finding.18 Howell, 734 P.2d 214; *984Com. v. Billa, 555 A.2d 835 (Pa.1989). See also Llach v. United States, 739 F.2d 1322 (8th Cir.1984); United States v. McClain, 440 F.2d 241 (D.C.Cir.1971); and State v. Stevens, 115 N.J. 289, 558 A.2d 833, 841 (1989). Cf. United States v. Jimenez, 613 F.2d 1373 (5th Cir.1980), where that court said even the most careful of instructions, however, would not have sufficiently limited the prejudicial nature of the extrinsic offense evidence.
The effect of these procedural safeguards are both to ameliorate unnecessary prejudice in the search for truth and also to define carefully what is to be accomplished during that search. Justice Blume warned us years ago of the dangers in allowing evidence of other crimes in Rosencrance v. State, 33 Wyo. 360, 366, 239 P. 952 (1925) (quoting Commonwealth v. Shepard, 1 Allen (Mass.) 575 and Towne v. People, 89 Ill.App. 258):
“It is a dangerous species of evidence, not only because it requires a defendant to meet and explain other acts than those charged against him and for which he is on trial, but also because it may lead the jury to violate the great principle that a party is not to be convicted of one crime by proof that he is guilty of another.”
* * * * * #
“But the general rule is salutary and a departure from it is perilous, and hence courts are reluctant to extend the exception to the rule beyond well established lines.”
I do not fall into the justification by necessity and adaptation that admissibility is determined by the relative weakness of the prosecution’s case. If the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, the intrinsic offense evidence is either redundant, repetitive or harmless error. The real issue of bad acts evidence in criminal case prosecution is where the result is questionable unless the particularized effect can be secured by the use of intrinsically prejudicial material as persuasively and factually related to the character, reputation or propensity of the charged defendant. It is in this circumstance that the method of securing a criminal conviction is most frequently pressed and more often abused.
There is another fundamental concern which attaches to our current trend of pretending to use bad acts evidence for something beyond pure propensity evidence. The author in Comment, Defining Standards for Determining the Admissibility of Evidence of Other Sex Offenses, 25 UCLA L.Rev. 261, 274 (1977), as an authority cited by the majority, accurately observes:
Given the objective of fairness to the defendant, it would be incongruous if a defendant were forced to choose between not testifying and appearing guilty, and testifying and subjecting himself to certain prejudice.
My sense of disquiet with our mutation into an inquisitorial judicial system for criminal trials comes not only from the realization that the defendant is deterred from personally presenting his testimony to the jury, but that the defense is deterred from effective cross-examination and use of other witnesses in order to avoid “opening the door.” If innocence is maintained or any defense is made, credibility of the complainants is arguably presented and bad acts evidence is available to attack “credibility” of the defense or support credibility of the prosecution. Defendant’s counsel then faces not only the inquiry for truth as a perceived criteria of the trial environment, but assessing prejudicial bad acts evidence and what will happen if he makes any effort to effectively mount a defense in representation of his client.19 There is a world of difference in moral justification between use of bad acts evidence to discredit a witness from usage to underpin the credibility of the complainant by attacking defendant or his witnesses.
In urging a revision of F.R.E. 403, Professor Craig Lewis in Proof and Prejudice: A Constitutional Challenge to the Treatment of Prejudicial Evidence in Federal Criminal Cases, 64 Wash.L.Rev. 289, 362-63 (1989) contends:
Federal Rule of Evidence 403 fails to account for constitutionally protected in*985terests of defendants in criminal trials. In its present form it invites decisions on the admissibility of potentially prejudicial evidence that jeopardize the trustworthiness of determinations of guilt. Appellate review offers little more than a placebo for the risks of error created by the rule.
The problem with Rule 403 is fundamental: the rule and its current jurisprudence conflict with the presumption of innocence and the most basic precepts of criminal justice in an accusatorial system. The cure must come from a revision of the rule that will reorder trial and appellate court priorities to account for the individual and societal interest in reasonable certainty about the accuracy of convictions.
A call for that cure undoubtedly will find disfavor in an era of judicial sensitivity to a publicly perceived overindulgence of those charged with crime. Nonetheless, the concept of criminal justice reflected in the reasonable doubt standard and the constitutional doctrine established by Winship demand a revision of Rule 403 to reallocate the risks of factfinder error in criminal cases. The revision proposed in this Article would shift to the prosecution the burden of justifying the creation of a potential for unfair prejudice and the incentive to offer the least prejudicial proof on an issue. It also would heighten judicial awareness of the fundamental interests placed at risk by the use of prejudicial evidence in criminal cases and would place the greater share of the risks of factfinding error on the prosecution, where it belongs.
The price of the revision would be — indeed, would be calculated to be — the acquittal of some persons who would have been convicted under the present Rule 403. Some portion of this increase in acquittals will include defendants who in fact are guilty of the crimes with which they were charged. But a significant portion of these additional acquittals will be of defendants who are in fact innocent but who would have been convicted under the present rule because of its error-inducing structure. If our professed interest in reasonable certainty about the guilt of persons convicted of crimes is genuine, we should readily pay the price of the revision.
We should look to what Wigmore once recognized, but since the immersion in present “liberal rules” is now seldom acknowledged:
Most courts recognize that the allowance of a course of examination into particular misconduct places in the hands of cross-examining counsel an instrument which he may use not wisely but too well. * * *
The first reason, to be sure, is purely one of sentiment. The ordinary instincts of decency, not to say courtesy, are violated by such examinations, and every new instance makes us more sodden to the spectacle and tends to bring us towards the same level of degradation. It is the difference between the hunt and the slaughterhouse. One may well enough find sport in stalking the lion in the desert or beating the bush for the tiger, because there is a risk for the hunter which dignifies his sport, and there is a rapacity and destructiveness in the hunted which leaves no room for sympathy; but the process of cutting the throat or knocking the head of a sheep or an ox penned in the shambles is both safe and brutal, and is to be justified only on the ground of its absolute necessity. The hunting down of a fleeing desperado, or the ensnaring of a chief of counterfeiters by the craft of detectives, is a process which does not violate instincts of fairness or principles of justice. But the ruthless flaying of personal character in the witness box is not only cowardly — because there is no escape for the victim — and brutal — because it inflicts the pain of public exposure of misdeeds to idle bystanders — but it has often not the slightest justification of necessity. Severe limits must be put to such conduct. As Lord Ellenborough said, “I will put it to your own feelings, your own good sense.” Some weight must be allowed to the instincts of manly fairness and good sense.
The second reason is a politic one, i.e., that, with the prospect of such an exami*986nation as a possibility, the public is certain to dread the witness box. From time to time those whose knowledge would have been valuable will seek to evade disclosing it; the ascertainment of the truth will be hampered and perhaps prevented. That such a feeling exists today, in a greater or less degree, can hardly be doubted.
3A Wigmore, Evidence § 983 at 841 (1970) (emphasis in original and footnote omitted).20
The majority, although first recognizing the accused always maintained his innocence, reveals latent inquisitorial tendencies with but a few sentences:
Although not testifying himself [within the defense that he was innocent of the crime charged], Gezzi attacked G.G.’s credibility through the introduction, in defense to the charge, of the testimony of Mrs. Gezzi and a social worker that G.G. had a tendency to lie. Moreover, the physical evidence admitted at trial was inconclusive as to the cause of G.G.'s physical symptoms. P.G.’s testimony relating a course of sexual misconduct occurring between herself and Gezzi was sufficiently similar to the events of molestation occurring between Gezzi and G.G. to be particularly relevant under Rule 404(b) for the purpose of corroborating G.G.’s testimony.
Again, I claim Gezzi should have been charged with incest with his older daughter if her testimony to that effect was allowed in open court when he was being tried for such acts with his younger daughter — then he would have been afforded a realistic opportunity to defend himself through effective counsel. I cannot justify the admissibility of the extrinsic offense evidence in this case within the procedure followed or on the substantive basis of availability whenever our common constitutional right to defend might be undertaken by anyone criminally accused. I dissent.

. See p. 986, infra.

. See Note, The Admissibility of Prior Bad Acts in Sexual Assault Cases Under Alaska Rule of Evidence 404(b) — An Emerging Double Standard, V Alaska L.Rev. 193 (1988).

. The judicial sponsors who now rush to increase the power of the state by pointing out the "inclusive” characteristics of W.R.E. 404 seem paralyzed by their own logic when the "inclusive” characteristics of such conservative provisions as U.S. Const, amend. IX or Wyo.Const. art. 1, § 36 are pointed out as well.

. See citation of other current authorities and scholastic reviews in Brown, 736 P.2d 1110 (Urbigkit, J., dissenting).

. Weinstein states the problem as:
Although all American jurisdictions agree that no evidence may be introduced which seeks solely to prove that the accused has a criminal disposition, the question of when evidence of a particular criminal act may be admitted is so perplexing that the cases sometimes seem as numerous "as the sands of the sea," and often cannot be reconciled.
2 Weinstein’s Evidence, United States Rules ¶ 404[08] at 404-53 (1989).
On a more limited field of mutation by all-inclusive exception, a recent federal court case recognized:
Because intent is an element of virtually every crime, if evidence of other criminal activity were routinely allowed in simply to prove the intent element of a crime, the intent "exception" would soon swallow the rule. * * * Thus, we have stressed that intent must be a genuinely contested matter in the case and not merely a formal issue.
Landrum v. United States, 559 A.2d 1323, 1326 (D.C.App.1989).

. Cf. Note, supra n. 2, V Alaska L.Rev. 193.

. "If a murderous propensity may be proved against a defendant as one of the tokens of his guilt, a rule of criminal evidence ... must first be declared away. Fundamental hitherto has been the rule that character is never an issue in a criminal prosecution unless the defendant chooses to make it one.... In a very real sense a defendant starts his life afresh when he stands before a jury, a prisoner at the bar.... Inflexibly the law has set its face against the endeavor to fasten guilt upon him by proof of character or experience predisposing to an act of crime.... The principle back of the exclusion is one, not of logic, but of policy_ There may be cogency in the argument that a quarrelsome defendant is more likely to start a quarrel than one of a milder type, a man of dangerous mode of life more likely than a shy recluse. The law is not blind to this but equally it is not blind to the peril to the innocent if character is accepted as probative of crime. ‘The natural and inevitable tendency of the tribunal — whether judge or jury — is to give excessive weight to the vicious record of crime thus exhibited, and either to allow it to bear too strongly on the present charge, or to take the proof of it as justifying a condemnation irrespective of guilt of the present charge.”’
Payne, The Law Whose Life is Not Logic: Evidence of Other Crimes in Criminal Cases, 3 U.Rich.L.Rev. 62, 67-68 (1968) (quoting People v. Zackowitz, 254 N.Y. 192, 172 N.E. 466, 468 (1930)) (emphasis in original).

. It is also my persuasion that the rule for determining whether the proffered testimony is bad acts, extrinsic offense evidence or immediate circumstance intrinsic offense evidence comes within the same general rules for admission of other evidence as a general standard of exercised trial court discretion. It follows that the broad arena of discretion to determine existence of and admission for course of events evidence is less confined in prejudicial analysis, probative criteria and relevance than is the proper application to the W.R.E. 404(b) evidence which is principally related to propensity and character. If there has been any specific analysis of this proper differentiation, it has not come to the attention of this writer in the multitude of cases and hordes of law journal analyses. See Scadden, 732 P.2d 1036 and Crozier, 723 P.2d 42. See also Leavitt, 878 F.2d 1329.

. See Wyoming historical precedent in Lauthern, 769 P.2d 350; State v. Koch, 64 Wyo. 175, 189 P.2d 162 (1948); State v. Quirk, 38 Wyo. 462, 268 P. 189 (1928); and Strand v. State, 36 Wyo. 78, 252 P. 1030 (1927) to be compared with Brown, 736 P.2d 1110 and Elliott v. State, 600 P.2d 1044 (Wyo. 1979). See also Note, Evidence — The Impotence of Wyoming Rule of Evidence 404 in Sex Crime Trials: Brown v. State, 736 P.2d 1110 (Wyo. 1987), XXIII Land & Water L.Rev. 267, 280 (1988).

. Note, supra n. 2, V Alaska L.Rev. 193.

. Banks v. Crowner, 694 P.2d 101 (Wyo.1985); City of Evanston v. Whirl Inn, Inc., 647 P.2d 1378 (Wyo.1982). See generally 2 D. Louisell and C. Mueller, Federal Evidence § 125 (1985).

. Howell, 734 P.2d 214; 2 Weinstein’s Evidence, supra, If 404[19] at 404-163.

. United States v. Robinson, 700 F.2d 205 (5th Cir.1983); State v. Stevens, 115 N.J. 289, 558 A.2d 833 (1989); State v. Niemeyer, 195 N.J.Super. 559, 480 A.2d 963 (1984).

. United States v. Phillips, 599 F.2d 134 (6th Cir.1979); Beechum, 582 F.2d 898; Reed, supra, 50 U.Cin.L.Rev. 713.

. Goodman v. State, 601 P.2d 178 (Wyo.1979).

. C. Wright & K. Graham, supra, § 5215 at 273-74 (footnotes omitted) states:
Once probative value has been determined, the court must look to the six countervailing factors listed in Rule 403. These are grouped into three "dangers” — unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury — and three "considerations” — undue delay, waste of time, and needless presentation of cumulative evidence. In the original scheme, exclusion was mandatory when probative value was outweighed by one or more of the "dangers,” but only discretionary when “considerations” were involved. Although the original distinction has been abolished, "dangers” will still be weightier than "considerations” when the balance is struck because the three “dangers” all threaten the validity of factfinding, whereas the "considerations” only effect the efficiency of the courts. >
“Unfair prejudice” will probably become the most significant of the three "dangers.” Attorneys are more alert to this factor and invoke it more often. Since the categories of prejudice, confusion, and misleading the jury tend to overlap, courts often discuss all three in terms of prejudice. In extreme cases, the use of unfair prejudice against a criminal defendant can deny him a fair trial in violation of the right to due process.
See also C. Wright & K. Graham, supra, § 5214 at 263; 2 Weinstein’s Evidence, supra, ¶ 404[18] at 404-141; Lewis, Proof and Prejudice: A Constitutional Challenge to the Treatment of Prejudicial Evidence in Federal Criminal Cases, 64 Wash.L.Rev. 289 (1989).
The two stage analysis is engrossed by Judge Selya in United States v. Rodríguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d 153, 155 (1st Cir.1989) (footnotes omitted):
Determining the admissibility of evidence of other (uncharged) bad acts requires a bifurcated inquiry. First, the district court must be satisfied that the proffered material has "special” probative value, that is, that the evidence is relevant not to show a defendant’s propensity toward evil, but to prove some controverted issue in the case. * * *
Once shown to be relevant in the requisite sense, the evidence must pass still another sentry, embodied in Fed.R.Evid. 403. If the evidence brings unwanted baggage, say, unfair prejudice or a cognizable risk of confusing the jury, and if the baggage’s weight substantially overbalances any probative value, then the evidence must be excluded.

. Stevens, 558 A.2d at 833; C. Wright & K. Graham, supra, § 5224 at 321; Weinstein and Berger, Basic Rules of Evidence in the Proposed Federal Rules of Evidence, 4 Ga.L.Rev. 43, 86 (1969). Cf. United States v. Dolliole, 597 F.2d 102 (7th Cir.), cert, denied 442 U.S. 946, 99 S.Ct. 2894, 61 L.Ed.2d 318 (1979).

. However, trial error may not result unless counsel requests that a limiting instruction, appropriate to the circumstances, be given. United States v. Sangrey, 586 F.2d 1312 (9th Cir. 1978); United States v. Cooper, 577 F.2d 1079 (6th Cir.), cert. denied 439 U.S. 868, 99 S.Ct. 196, 58 L.Ed.2d 179 (1978).

. Ladd, Credibility Tests — Current Trends, 89 U.Pa.L.Rev. 166, 191 (1940).

. It has been the principal attention of the courts to consider bad acts evidence in reference to the criminally accused and perhaps his witnesses. State v. Shaw, 775 P.2d 207 (Mont. 1989). It should, however, be recognized that impeachment and credibility destruction of witnesses is not logically confined to defendants in criminal cases. Complainants and other witnesses for the prosecution and all participants in civil cases can, in time, be similarly subjected to a regurgitation of their history to create and influence the jury by credibility destruction. This general trend is directly contrary to rape shield statutes and evidentiary principles which seek to deny defensive tactics to destroy the believability and worth of the complainant. Murder or rape is no less a crime when committed upon a person who might be a prostitute than is the question when perpetrated upon someone of unimpeachable virtue. See civil trial application of conviction without balancing in Green v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co., — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1981, 104 L.Ed.2d 557 (1989). However, do not expect fairness in any consistency for equal rights for the defendant. See Carey v. State, 715 P.2d 244 (Wyo.), cert. denied 479 U.S. 882, 107 S.Ct. 270, 93 L.Ed.2d 247 (1986) which creates a post-crime rape victim shield. See also Note, Evidence — Diggs v. Lyons: The Use of Prior Criminal Convictions to Impeach Credibility in Civil Actions Under Rule 609(a), 60 Tul.L.Rev. 863 (1986); and Note, Impeachment With Prior Convictions Under Federal Rule of Evidence 609(a)(i): A Plea for Balance, 63 Wash.U.L.Q. 469 (1985).