Court Opinion

ID: 9712666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:58:13.597181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:13.650954
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(concurring). I agree that the defendant did not receive a fair trial and that a new trial is appropriate. However, I do not believe that on retrial the judge should have discretion to deny a request of the defendant that the indictments involving different victims be tried separately.
Indictments involving one victim may not be joined with indictments involving another victim unless the evidence as to one victim would be admissible in a separate trial as to the other. Commonwealth v. Gallison, 383 Mass. 659, 672 (1981). Commonwealth v. Blow, 362 Mass. 196, 200 (1972). Here the evidence as to one victim should not be admissible in a separate trial as to the other victim.
Multiple offenses are alleged to have taken place at the defendant’s apartment on different occasions involving several victims who claim to know the assailant from having met him at a neighborhood store. It is clear from these allegations that the identity of the alleged assailant will not be the critical issue at retrial. The court recognizes this. Supra at 757. It is equally clear that the assailant’s state of mind will not be a contested issue. The critical issue at a separate trial for offenses against any one of the victims will be whether the alleged offenses against the victim actually occurred. Consequently, the question before this court is whether evidence of offenses against one child ought to be admitted at a trial for offenses against another child to show that the latter offenses occurred. The only possible relevance of evidence of offenses against one child on the issue whether offenses against another child actually occurred is its tendency to show that the defendant had a *762disposition to commit sexual offenses against children. The arguable inference is that such a disposition makes it more likely that the crime was committed, and that the defendant committed it, than if the defendant did not have that disposition.
The admission of such evidence is unfairly prejudicial to the defendant because its marginal probative value on the question whether the offense occurred is far outweighed by the danger that a jury with that information will find him guilty without being satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the indicted offense occurred. See McCormick, Evidence § 188 (2d ed. 1972). This court has held many times, and it should continue to hold, that evidence of other crimes is inadmissible if its only relevance is to show a disposition to commit the indicted offense. Commonwealth v. Gallison, supra at 672. Commonwealth v. Schoening, 379 Mass. 234, 242 (1979). Commonwealth v. Baker, 368 Mass. 58, 85-86 (1975). Commonwealth v. Murphy, 282 Mass. 593, 598 (1933).
In Commonwealth v. Welcome, 348 Mass. 68 (1964), the defendant was tried for indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of fourteen. This court held that evidence that the defendant had assaulted other young girls was inadmissible to prove the defendant guilty of the crime charged. Id. at 70-71. The court states (supra at 755-756), that Welcome was not overruled by Commonwealth v. King, 387 Mass. 464 (1982), and Commonwealth v. Gallison, supra, but inexplicably it fails to follow Welcome, which is indistinguishable in any significant way from this case.
Commonwealth v. Gallison, supra, is not inconsistent with Welcome. In Gallison, this court held that evidence of other crimes was admissible, not to prove that the defendant committed the alleged criminal act, as the court would permit here, but to prove the defendant’s state of mind as an element of manslaughter. Id. at 672.
In sum, the court’s failure to require severance of the indictments against the defendant is inconsistent with the principles and specific holdings of its earlier cases. In this *763respect, the court’s decision follows only Commonwealth v. King, supra. In King, this court held that evidence of the defendant’s sexual misconduct with the female victim’s younger brother was admissible at the trial for an offense against the female victim. The evidence was held admissible to prove the defendant’s commission of the alleged criminal act. There, I dissented on the ground that the holding “undermine[d], if it [did] not destroy, a time honored, salutary rule that ‘[f]airness to a defendant in a criminal case requires . . . that the commission by him of an independent crime cannot ordinarily be shown as evidence tending to show the commission of the crime charged.’ Commonwealth v. Stone, [321 Mass. 471] 473 [1947].” Commonwealth v. King, supra at 479-480. I continue to believe that King was wrongly decided. The court’s failure here to require severance on retrial, if severance is requested by the defendant, not only reconfirms, but also perhaps extends the holding of King. In concluding that evidence of another crime was admissible, in the trial judge’s discretion, the court in King relied in part on the fact that “both children lived in the same house with the defendant.” Id. at 472. In this case, the defendant and the alleged victims did not live in the same house. The court’s failure to require severance further erodes the time-honored, salutary principle expressed in Commonwealth v. Stone, 321 Mass. 471 (1947).