Court Opinion

ID: 9568330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:02:35.218412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:37.416884
License: Public Domain

KLEINSCHMIDT, Judge,
Dissenting.
¶ 16 I respectfully dissent. I do ' not agree that this case is controlled by State v. Geschwind, 136 Ariz. 360, 666 P.2d 460 (1983). Assuming that I am correct in that respect, I believe that Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 117 S.Ct. 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997), and a case decided by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, State v. Alexander, 214 Wis.2d 628, 571 N.W.2d 662 (Wis.1997), offer good reasons to uphold the trial court’s decision forbidding the State from presenting evidence of the Defendant’s prior convictions to the jury.
¶ 17 I will explain why I do not believe Geschwind controls this case. In Geschwind, our supreme court, citing Rule 19.1(b) of the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure, held that a defendant accused of driving while intoxicated who had a prior conviction for the same offense was not entitled to a bifurcated trial on the issue of the prior conviction because the fact of the prior was an element of the offense charged. 136 Ariz. at 362, 666 P.2d at 462. The defendant in Geschwind did not offer to stipulate that he had a prior conviction so that, if his request had been granted, the state would have been put to the trouble of trying two separate cases and to the added peril of having the defendant be *441acquitted on the element of the prior conviction. That is not the ease here. If the jury-finds that Petersen was driving under the influence, he, having already judicially admitted the existence of prior convictions and the suspension, will be adjudged guilty of the felony with which he is charged.
¶ 18 I do not believe that Rule 19.1(b), which provides that the defendant is entitled to a bifurcated trial when priors are alleged unless the prior conviction is an element of the crime charged, forbids what the trial judge did in this case. I think the rule is sufficiently flexible to permit the court to keep the knowledge of the prior conviction from the jury when guilt on that element of the crime has been conclusively established.
¶ 19 I turn to the two cases that support the trial judge’s decision not to put to the jury the issue of the prior conviction and suspension. The first is Old Chief, in which the defendant was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. 519 U.S. at 174, 117 S.Ct. 644. He had previously been convicted of aggravated assault. Fearing that knowledge of that fact would prejudice the jury, the defendant offered to stipulate that he had a prior felony conviction, asserting that if he did so, the name and nature of the prior felony would be inadmissible because, under Rule 408 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the probative value of the evidence was outweighed by its prejudicial effect. Id. at 175, 117 S.Ct. 644. The prosecutor rejected the stipulation, insisting on proving his case in his own way. Id. at 177, 117 S.Ct. 644. The trial court ruled in favor of the prosecution, and the court of appeals affirmed.
¶ 20 The Supreme Court reversed. It acknowledged that the name and nature of the prior felony conviction was material, but it also recognized that the introduction of that evidence would be unfairly prejudicial. Old Chief, 519 U.S. at 180, 117 S.Ct. 644. The Court noted that the name and nature of the prior conviction might lead the jury to convict on the general notion that “a bad person deserves punishment.” Id. at 181, 117 S.Ct. 644 (quoting United States v. Moccia, 681 F.2d 61, 63 (1st Cir.1982)). It conceded that there are reasons for allowing the prosecution to prove its case the way it chooses when a stipulation will rob the evidence of its “fair and legitimate weight.” Id. at 187, 117 S.Ct. 644. The Court summarized these reasons as follows:
In sum, the accepted rule that the prosecution is entitled to prove its case free from any defendant’s option to stipulate the evidence away rests on good sense. A syllogism is not a story, and a naked proposition in a courtroom may be no match for the robust evidence that would be used to prove it. People who hear a story interrupted by gaps of abstraction may be puzzled at the missing chapters, and jurors asked to rest a momentous decision on the story’s truth can feel put upon at being asked to take responsibility knowing that more could be said than they have heard. A convincing tale can be told with economy, but when economy becomes a break in the natural sequence of narrative evidence, an assurance that the missing link is really there is never more than second best.
Old Chief, 519 U.S. at 189, 117 S.Ct. 644 (quoting Dunning v. Maine Central R. Co., 91 Me. 87, 39 A. 352, 356 (1897), as cited in Parr v. United States, 255 F.2d 86, 88 (5th Cir.1958)).
¶21 The court then pointed out that these concerns had “virtually no application when the point at issue is a defendant’s legal status, dependent on some judgment rendered wholly independently of the concrete events of later criminal behavior charged against him.” Id. at 190, 117 S.Ct. 644. It concluded that the trial court had abused its discretion in refusing to require the prosecution to accept the stipulation because the only reasonable conclusion was that the risk of unfair prejudice substantially outweighed the probative value of identifying the name and nature of the felony. Id. at 191-92, 117 S.Ct. 644.
¶ 22 The Wisconsin case referred to earlier, Alexander, deals with the identical issue that is presented in the case now before us. In Alexander, the defendant was charged with operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more with two prior convictions, suspensions or revocations. 214 Wis.2d 628, 571 N.W.2d 662, 664 *442(Wis.1997). Before trial, the defendant offered to stipulate that he had two or more prior convictions and moved to prevent the state from offering evidence to that effect. Id. at 666. The trial court refused to require the state to stipulate and forego presenting the evidence.
¶23 The Supreme Court of Wisconsin construed the Wisconsin statute that parallels Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Citing extensively from Old Chief, the court went beyond the holding in that case to say that any evidence of the prior convictions, not just the name and nature of the offense, should have been kept from the jury. Id. at 672. It concluded that because the defendant was charged with driving with a prohibited blood alcohol concentration, the jury would assume the prior offenses were for driving under the influence if the jurors were informed that the defendant had two or more convictions, suspensions, or revocations. Id. at 670.
¶ 24 The Alexander court explained that the only probative value of the priors was to prove the defendant’s status, a factor that is wholly independent of the concrete events that make up the gravamen of the offense charged. It agreed with the Supreme Court’s statement in Old Chief that proof of a status element of an offense is unnecessary to give evidentiary depth to the state’s descriptive narrative. Id. at 671.
¶25 The Wisconsin court explained why it excluded any evidence of the priors, while Old Chief merely excluded the name and nature of the offense. It pointed out that in Old Chief, the defendant did not seek to exclude any reference to his prior conviction, but asked only to exclude the name and nature of the offense. Alexander, 571 N.W.2d at 671. It also observed that in Old Chief, unlike in a case involving drinking and driving, the government had some need to complete the story because in most jurisdictions the possession of a firearm is not illegal. Id. Without the evidence of the prior, the jurors would not have understood why the defendant was being prosecuted. The court found that the danger of unfair prejudice far outweighed any probative value of the evidence and concluded that the trial court had abused its discretion it admitting the proof of the priors.
¶ 26 As the majority points out, the courts of Texas have refused to apply the rationale of Old Chief to drunk driving offenses. In the leading Texas case, Maibauer v. State, 968 S.W.2d 502 (Texas App.1998, pet. refd), the Texas Court of Appeals held that the state was not required to accept a defendant’s offer to stipulate to prior drunk driving convictions. It said that reading the indictment to the jury is a jurisdictional prerequisite under Texas law, so that the jury would learn of the priors in any event. Id. at 506-07. Without elaboration, it distinguished Old Chief by observing that the offense for which the defendant was charged required proof of a specific prior drunk driving offense, not just a generic felony as in Old Chief. Id. at 507. The Texas court’s jurisdictional rationale does not apply in our case, and the distinction it draws between specific and generic crimes is not particularly persuasive.
¶ 27 In the case before us, the trial judge proposed a procedure that would totally obviate the need for the State to present evidence of prior convictions. Under that procedure, the only purpose of acquainting the jury with those priors would be to create unfair prejudice against the Defendant. I would deny the relief requested in this special action.