Court Opinion

ID: 9773706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:55:43.430718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:56.572050
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in result.
I concur in the holding of the principal opinion affirming the conviction and death sentence and the overruling of the appellant’s Rule 29.15 motion. I do not agree, however, with the analysis the principal opinion employs to conclude that the trial court did not err in its decision to admit evidence of the appellant’s uncharged assault on Keri McEn-tee. Nor do I agree with the conclusion Judge Covington reaches in her dissent that a new trial is warranted because the trial court admitted this evidence. Therefore, I must write separately, if briefly, to express my understanding of the proper analysis of this evidence.
In her dissent, Judge Covington correctly states the legal analysis of the uncharged-bad-acts evidence. I need not repeat her effort, beyond agreeing with her that the principal opinion fails to justify its conclusion on the McEntee assault under the precedent this Court has consistently followed. State v. Bernard, 849 S.W.2d 10 (Mo. banc 1993); State v. Sladek, 835 S.W.2d 308 (Mo. banc 1992); State v. Reese, 364 Mo. 1221, 274 S.W.2d 304 (1954).
I do not agree, however, with Judge Cov-ington’s conclusion that the erroneous admission of evidence of the McEntee assault requires reversal of the conviction in this case. That the evidence of uncharged bad acts is error is the product of an analysis that weighs the logical relevance of evidence (the evidence tends to make the existence of material fact more or less probable) against its legal relevance (the cost of the evidence in terms of its potential for prejudice to the defendant or confusing the jury). See Sla-dek, 835 S.W.2d at 314 (Thomas, J., concurring). The word “prejudice” does not carry the same meaning in every context. Prejudice that requires a conclusion that the trial court erred in admitting a particular kind of evidence is not the same kind of prejudice that requires reversal of the results of a trial. *900Trial court error that requires reversal exists if the error more-likely-than-not prejudices the entire proceeding against the appellant. I would style this kind of prejudice “outcome-determinative trial prejudice.” Outcome-determinative trial prejudice exists where there is a reasonable probability that the jury would have reached a different conclusion had the error not occurred.
It does not follow, therefore, as Judge Covington seems to imply, that the prejudice that is part of the analysis in determining whether a trial court erred in admitting particular evidence is also per se outcome-determinative trial prejudice. Such a conclusion seems the product of a microscopic examination of one part of the evidence presented at a trial while ignoring the totality of the other evidence against the defendant.
The outcome-determinative-trial-prejudice analysis that I think the law requires asks an appellate court to balance the totality of the evidence the jury properly heard against the evidence it improperly heard. In this case, that balance decisively supports the principal opinion’s affirmance of the conviction. The evidence of the multitude of SkiUicom’s other sins, properly admitted under the Bemard-Sladek-Reese standard, makes Skillicom’s participation in the McEntee assault seem a minor irritant in the comparison. I have no hesitancy in concluding that Skillicom suffered no outcome-determinative trial prejudice even though the trial court erred in admitting this evidence.