Court Opinion

ID: 9715880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:18:43.377713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:39.260178
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(concurring). I agree with Judge Pigott that, if admission of the challenged evidence was error, the error was not harmless, and therefore, like him, I reach the merits of the case. Unlike Judge Pigott, I conclude that there was no error, though I admit the case is not an easy one.
Defendant was charged with the forcible and statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl. He had been staying as a guest in the apartment of the girl’s family. A young woman who also lived in the apartment, the baby-sitter for a younger child, was allowed to testify that, shortly before the event on which the prosecution was based, defendant had raped her, and had remarked while doing so “that [the 14-year-old] was lucky I was there, because if I wasn’t there, it would be her.” I think defendant’s statement, in itself, was clearly admissible against him. The uncharged rape, in itself, was inadmissible under People v Molineux (168 NY 264 [1901]), but I conclude that the trial court had discretion to admit evidence of the rape to give meaning to the statement.
The apparent meaning of the defendant’s statement is: “I would rape the 14-year-old if I couldn’t rape you.” I see no ground for doubt that such an expression of desire — even conditionally phrased — to commit the very crime for which he was on trial was admissible. Of course, there could be no hearsay objection to the admission of defendant’s own statement when offered by the People. The briefs here, and the opinions below, discuss the applicability of Mutual Life Ins. Co. v Hillmon (145 US 285 [1892]), but I find Hillmon, a hearsay case, to be totally irrelevant.
It seems equally clear that the baby-sitter’s testimony about the uncharged rape is the sort of evidence that Molineux would ordinarily bar. Evidence like this has a tendency “to demonstrate the defendant’s bad character and general criminal propensity” and “there is a very real danger that the trier of *872fact will overestimate its significance” (People v Hudy, 73 NY2d 40, 55 [1988]). I do not agree that the prejudice that inevitably flows from the admission of this sort of evidence was harmless in this case, which — as the majority’s own summary shows— otherwise rested largely on the victim’s uncorroborated word.
In short, the trial court faced a dilemma, which it summed up concisely:
“[The evidence of the act] is prejudicial; there is no question about that. But [the statement is] extremely and highly probative. And to [admit] the statement without allowing the context of the act would make the statement meaningless and unintelligible to a jury . . . .”
The court could have resolved the dilemma in defendant’s favor, by excluding both the statement and the uncharged crime, but it had excellent reasons not to do so. It would have been unfair to the People, and would have invited a miscarriage of justice, to conceal from the jury the highly relevant information that defendant had expressed a willingness to rape the girl he was accused of raping. The trial court decided instead to allow the baby-sitter to testify to both the statement and the act, taking precautions to minimize the prejudice to defendant. The court ordered that the testimony be kept as brief as possible, and gave a hmiting instruction forbidding the jury to infer “that the defendant possessed a propensity or disposition to commit the crimes charged in this indictment.”
This may not have been a perfect solution; with hindsight, a better approach might be imagined, that somehow conveyed the substance of defendant’s statement to the jurors without disclosing the act that accompanied it. But no one suggested such an approach at the time, and I would not hold that the trial judge erred by failing to come up with one on his own. I think he did reasonably well with a difficult problem, and did not err in the ruling he made.