Court Opinion

ID: 9634841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:25:51.385307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:11.144247
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent, and I join Mr. Justice McDermott’s dissenting opinion. Additionally, I set forth the following analysis in support of the trial court’s determination that evidence of a distinct similar crime was admissible evidence that could legitimately be used against appellant in the instant case.
The majority takes a far too narrow view of the “special circumstances” which justify the introduction in a criminal prosecution of a defendant’s other crimes. As the majority states, it is certainly true as a general proposition:
that evidence of a distinct crime, except under special circumstances, is inadmissible against a defendant who is being tried for another crime because the commission of one crime is not proof of the commission of another, and the effect of such evidence is to create prejudice against the defendant in the jury’s mind.
Commonwealth v. Morris, 493 Pa. 164, 175, 425 A.2d 715, 720 (1981).
However, as the majority notes, this general rule is indeed subject to numerous exceptions. As we recently stated in Commonwealth v. Banks, 513 Pa. 318, 521 A.2d 1 (1987):
[T]he general rule prohibiting the admission of evidence of prior crimes nevertheless *482allows evidence of other crimes to be introduced to prove (1) motive; (2) intent; (3) absence of mistake or accident; (4) a common scheme, plan or design embracing commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to prove the others; or (5) to establish the identity of the person charged with the commission of the crime on trial, in other words, where there is such a logical connection between the crimes that proof of one will naturally tend to show that the accused is the person who committed the other.
Commonwealth v. Morris, supra at 493 Pa. 175, 425 A.2d 715. This list of “special circumstances” is not exclusive, and this Court has demonstrated it mil recognize additional exceptions to the general rule where the probative value of the evidence outweighs the tendency to prejudice the jury. Commonwealth v. Claypool, [508 Pa. 198, 204, 495 A.2d 176 (1985)] (evidence of defendant’s prior criminal activity is admissible where defendant makes statement about such activity in order to threaten and intimidate victim and where force or threat of force is element of crime for which defendant is being prosecuted). Such evidentiary issues are addressed to the sound discretion of the trial court and will not be reversed on appeal absent an abuse of discretion. Id. With these principles to guide us, we review appellant’s specific assignments of error.
513 Pa. 318, 521 A.2d at 17 (emphasis added).
As Dean McCormick stated:
[T]he prosecution may not introduce evidence of other criminal acts of the accused unless the evidence is substantially relevant for some other purpose than to show a probability that he committed the crime on trial because he is a man of criminal character. There are numerous other purposes for which evidence of other criminal acts may be offered, and when so offered the rule of exclusion is simply inapplicable.
*483McCormick, Evidence, § 190 (1972 2d ed.) (emphasis added), quoted in majority opinion, supra at 477.
It is clear from the foregoing that the “prejudice” of which Dean McCormick speaks, and which the general rule prohibiting evidence of distinct crimes seeks to prevent, is not simply prejudice in the sense that he will be linked to the crime for which he is being prosecuted, for that sort of “prejudice” is ostensibly the purpose of all prosecution evidence. Rather, this “prejudice” is the prejudice that would adhere if the evidence tended to convict the defendant of this crime only because he exhibited a propensity to commit this same type of crime at some other time or times or because he was a person of bad character. Commonwealth v. Banks, supra, 513 Pa. at 350-351, 521 A.2d at 17.
Viewed in light of the foregoing principles, I would hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in permitting the Commonwealth to introduce evidence of appellant’s brutal assault upon Bessie Sawyer on September 23, 1978 for which he was convicted. As Mr. Justice McDermott observes, the similarities between the assault on Bessie Sawyer and the assault on Edith Steckle on December 1, 1978 were quite remarkable. Both victims were elderly women who lived within blocks of each other, and of appellant, in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. Both defenseless women were viciously and senselessly attacked, a bit more than two months apart, at night in their homes, which were thoroughly ransacked. Appellant, a short black man, was positively identified as the attacker of Bessie Sawyer by eyewitnesses who saw appellant leave the scene wearing a dark leather jacket. A neighbor observed a short person leave Ms. Steckle’s home on the night of her brutalization carrying a television set and wearing a black leather jacket. The neighbor testified that he believed the person to be a black male.1 The manner of the attacks was also *484quite similar, each victim having been repeatedly and mercilessly beaten about the face and body, and left bloody and battered.
The evidence of these two crimes, so close in time and geographic proximity, and so similar in the gratuitous brutality accompanying a burglary and ransacking of homes, showed such a logical connection between them as to naturally show that the person who committed the one also committed the other. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, the vicious and gratuitous beatings of defenseless elderly victims are not “common elements” of most burglaries.
Additionally and importantly, there was further evidence that established an affirmative link between the “perpetrators” of these two crimes, namely appellant’s positive identification and palm print at the scene of Ms. Sawyer’s assault and the fact that appellant was in possession of several items (a radio, television set, and a 1919 high school ring) stolen from Ms. Steckle’s home, and the similar descriptions of the perpetrators. Thus, the significance of the evidence of the prior crime was not only that the perpetrator left his “signature” on both crimes (and on both victims), but also that one person — appellant—was positively linked to both crimes by extraneous evidence. The evidence of appellant’s assault and burglary of Ms. Sawyer was extremely probative of his guilt of the Steckle assault and burglary. Such evidence raised to a near certainty the probability that appellant attacked Ms. Steckle and stole her property, and discredited his feeble attempts to demonstrate that he had just coincidentally happened to purchase Ms. Steckle’s stolen television set and radio from a participant in a crap game in a Philadelphia school yard. (Appellant produced a witness to this “purchase,” a man who had been in Graterford prison with appellant and whose testimony was discredited on cross-examination).
There is presumably a large class of short black males in the Germantown area. There is only a limited potential *485class of such persons who possessed property stolen from Ms. Steckle on the night she was savagely beaten and killed, and the class of short black males from the German-town area who possessed Ms. Steckle’s stolen property and who had recently perpetrated a strikingly similar crime a few blocks away narrows the potential class to an exceedingly small class of one, namely appellant. See Commonwealth v. Holcomb, 508 Pa. 425, 448-455, 498 A.2d 833, 844-47 (1985) (Opinion of Mr. Justice Hutchinson announcing the judgment of the Court) (discussion of circumstantial evidence and inferences therefrom as narrowing the classes of potential perpetrators).
The majority gives short shrift to these affirmative links between appellant and the two crimes, and thus down plays the highly probative value of the evidence of the prior assault on Ms. Sawyer. The majority also appears to be influenced by perceived dissimilarities between the crimes, dissimilarities which I find insignificant. Obviously, the major dissimilarity was that appellant had defecated at the first crime and he did not at the second. Had he defecated at both places, his “signature” would have been more exaggerated, but his failure to do so at the second crime scene may simply indicate that he had nothing at that time to defecate.
For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the trial court’s ruling that the evidence of appellant’s prior crimes against Ms. Sawyer was highly probative and outweighed the possibility of undue prejudice against him, and could be introduced against him in the instant prosecution.

. The majority states of this neighbor’s testimony that "details such as race and other physical characteristics had not been observed.” At 475. This is misleading. While his observation was not stated with total certainty or conviction, the neighbor, Mr. Cleveland Brunson, did testify that it was his belief that the person he saw leaving Ms. *484Steckle’s house with a television set was a black male. Notes of Testimony, April 12, 1984 at 1.39.