Court Opinion

ID: 9648814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:35:44.18415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:05.647557
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. The majority concludes that the evidence of the defendant’s possible bigamous conduct was admissible to show that the defendant had a motive to commit the crime. I cannot agree. Motive was established by the testimony that Iris Dymond had broken off her relationship with the defendant and ordered him out of the house. The bigamous conduct concerns her motive — not the defendant’s — for breaking off the relationship. When facts are introduced to establish motive, the door is not open to show prior misconduct except to the extent necessary to establish the motive. Commonwealth v. Stanley, 484 Pa. 2, 398 A.2d 631 (1979); Commonwealth v. Fuller, 479 Pa. 353, 388 A.2d 693 (1978); Commonwealth v. Foose, 441 Pa. 173, 272 A.2d 452 (1971). Other facts which, as in this case, were highly prejudicial should not be admitted. Commonwealth v. Stanley, supra; Commonwealth v. Fuller, supra; Commonwealth v. Foose, supra.
In this case, the prosecution was entitled to establish that Iris Dymond had broken off her relationship with the de*504fendant and ordered him out of the apartment where the two of them had been living. It may even have been harmless had the testimony been limited to establishing that she did so because he was a married man. To allow further unnecessary evidence, however, which does not go to the defendant’s motive, concerning bigamy was prejudicial error. This “bad person” irrelevant evidence could well have influenced the jury in arriving at its verdict.