Court Opinion

ID: 9716747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:50:03.026971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:48.665478
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(dissenting). The court today condones the admission in evidence of highly inflammatory and prejudicial *944testimony offered in support of the dubious proposition that the testimony related to the defendants’ “motive.” Thus, I cannot join in part 1 of the court’s opinion. The crimes of which the defendants have been convicted are indeed heinous. Nevertheless, the facts of this case should not drive the court to a distortion of sound evidentiary principles nurtured and developed over many years as an essential guarantee of a fair trial. We should not allow outrage at the nature of the alleged crimes or sympathy for the alleged victims to cloud our constitutional duty to determine whether there was prejudicial error in this case.
The testimony of the expert witness, United States Postal Inspector Dunn, was not legally relevant to the indictments before the jury. The defendants were charged with indecent assault and battery on children under the age of fourteen and rape of children under the age of sixteen. The Commonwealth offered as evidence of the defendants’ motive Dunn’s detailed descriptions of pornographic photographs of children taken by persons not in any way connected to the defendants. Dunn also described objects, not mentioned by the children in this case, such as gun barrels, scissors, and dildoes, which were inserted into the genitalia of minors who were completely unrelated to this case.1 Additionally, Dunn was allowed to engage in a generalized discussion before the jury of the child pornography industry.
“In order to be considered relevant, ‘the evidence must have rendered the desired inference more probable than it would have been without it.’ ” Commonwealth v. Fayerweather, 406 Mass. 78, 83 (1989), quoting Commonwealth v. Copeland, 375 Mass. 438, 443 (1978). See Green v. Richmond, 369 Mass. 47, 59 (1975). Testimony concerning photographs depicting unnamed and unidentified children in pornographic poses is not relevant to whether these defendants in this particular case were more likely to have had the mo-*945live of committing the acts with which they were charged. The photographs about which Dunn testified were not related to the defendants in any way; they were not in evidence. They were not taken by the defendants and had not been in the possession of the defendants. There was no evidence to show that the children depicted in the photographs were the children involved in this case. And there was no evidence that the children in this case were forced to pose with gun barrels, scissors, dildoes, fruit, vegetables, or animals.
The Commonwealth apparently desired the jury to infer that, because pornographers often take photographs of children in poses similar to those described by the children involved in this case, these defendants took pictures of the victims for the purpose of distributing and marketing the photographs in the pornographic trade. Without any supporting evidence, that connection is so remote that it cannot be deemed to pass the threshold test of relevance. See Commonwealth v. Fayerweather, supra at 83. There was no evidence presented that the defendants were engaging in the pornography trade. No pornographic photographs allegedly taken by the defendants were presented in evidence. In short, Dunn’s testimony was irrelevant to show motive.2 See Commonwealth v. Lamrini, 392 Mass. 427, 433-435 (1984).
*946Even assuming Dunn’s testimony about pornography was marginally relevant, its probative value was far outweighed by its highly prejudicial effect.3 Dunn testified about the contents of several unidentified photographs in painstaking detail.4 He alluded to props and poses in photographs of unknown origin similar to pictures described by the children as taken by the defendants in this case.5 Dunn also described the “underground market” for child pornography. Dunn testified that it is very difficult to identify a child-victim from a particular piece of pornography. He finally testified that there is no central source in this country to help identify a child-victim in a particular photograph.
Dunn’s testimony suggested to the jury that these very photographs could have been photographs of the children in this case. Without any supporting evidence, and placed just beyond the view of the jury, these photographs were used by the witness in the presence of the jury. This testimony and Dunn’s related testimony served more to inflame the passions of the jury than to assist them in deciding an issue in this case.
*947The defendants were not charged with violating the laws prohibiting child pornography. Yet Dunn’s testimony suggested to the jury that the defendants had violated the pornography laws — based not on the acts of the defendants but on the acts of unnamed and unknown third parties.6 Even if the jury did not infer that the photographs described depicted the children in this case, the testimony was nonetheless highly prejudicial. Testimony concerning child abuse perpetrated by anonymous persons on anonymous children could have improperly played on the jury’s sympathy for the children in this case. In addition, there was inherent prejudice in Dunn’s allusion to objects, including scissors, dildoes, vibrators, and gun barrels, which were inserted into the genitalia of minors depicted in photographs unconnected with this case, and in his discussion of sexual poses with animals, also not mentioned by the children in this case. This testimony served only to stir the indignation and disgust of the jury, distracting them from the relevant, admissible evidence in this case.
The judge compounded the prejudice in his instruction to the jury on “common scheme.” The judge, while instructing the jury that the defendants were not charged with the crime of violating pornography laws, nevertheless instructed the jury that they could consider “the taking of pictures of the children” because “it may have shown a common scheme.” The court today states that the judge was referring to the testimony by the children that their pictures had been taken during the course of the abusive conduct. The court does not *948— but should — ask what a reasonable jury could glean from the charge. See Commonwealth v. Claudio, 405 Mass. 481, 484 (1989). The instruction given can be viewed reasonably as a reference to Dunn’s expert testimony which, after all, dealt exclusively with the taking of pictures of children. The jury could have understood participation in the underground pornography industry, described by Dunn, as the “common scheme” to which the judge alluded. The judge stated to the jury that the testimony “was allowed in for the limited purpose of establishing what might have been a motive.” This appears to be a direct reference to Dunn’s testimony about pornography.7 In my view, this is one of those rare cases where the trial judge abused his discretion by admitting in evidence testimony which was not only irrelevant but which was highly prejudicial. See Commonwealth v. Richmond, 371 Mass. 563, 565-566 (1976). For this reason, and because the evidence of guilt was highly dependent on the jury’s assessment of the credibility of witnesses, I would reverse the convictions. I dissent.

Dunn mentioned, among other things, “barrels of guns,” “scissors,”' “pieces of fruit,” “pieces of vegetables,” “vibrators,” “dildoes,” and “animals.”

The admission of Dunn’s testimony also violated the well-established rule in this Commonwealth that an expert may not give his opinion based on evidence which is inadmissible. Department of Youth Servs. v. A Juvenile, 398 Mass. 516, 527-528, 531 (1986). LaClair v. Silberline Mfg. Co., 379 Mass. 21, 32 (1979). Commonwealth v. Russ, 232 Mass. 58, 73 (1919). We have rejected the suggestion that we should follow Fed. R. Evid. 703 and Proposed Mass. R. Evid. 703, which allow an expert to testify based on “facts or data [which] need not be admissible in evidence.” Department of Youth Servs. v. A Juvenile, supra at 528. We do, however, allow an expert to “base an opinion on facts or data not in evidence if the facts or data are independently admissible and are a permissible basis for an expert to consider in formulating an opinion” (emphasis supplied). Id. at 531. The photographs about which Dunn testified are not “independently admissible”; the evidence of highly prejudicial photographs, entirely unrelated to this case, was not and could not have been admitted. In my view, the judge abused his discretion in allowing Dunn to refer to these photographs and to describe them in his testimony.

When reviewing the admission of motive evidence in past decisions, this court has referred to the probative worth of the evidence weighed against its prejudicial effect. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Todd, 394 Mass. 791, 798 (1985); Commonwealth v. St. Germain, 381 Mass. 256, 271 (1980); Commonwealth v. Imbruglia, 377 Mass. 682, 695 (1979); Commonwealth v. Brown, 376 Mass. 156, 165 (1978). Implicit in every relevance determination is the question whether the probative value outweighs the prejudicial effect. See P.J. Liacos, Massachusetts Evidence 409-411 (5th ed. 1981 & Supp. 1985).
The defendants in this case objected to the testimony and moved for a mistrial. The judge clearly was on notice as to the danger of allowing such testimony.

The following are examples of the nature of Dunn’s testimony. “They’re posed laying . . . prone on a bed or couch with their hands back, and they’re nude from maybe the chest area down, with their genitals exposed . . . Sitting in a sitting position, with their legs spread apart and their hands down by their genitals .... There are two here with a you can see the arms, I can’t tell somebody’s arms, and then the child.”

No photographs taken by the defendants were ever found to corroborate the testimony of the child-witnesses.

The court, ante at 935, quotes from Commonwealth v. Imbruglia, 377 Mass. 682, 695 (1979), which originally read: “When, however, the evidence is not too remote in time, or is connected with the facts of the case, it may be admitted to establish ‘knowledge, intent, motive, method, material to proof of the crime charged.’ ” Id., quoting Commonwealth v. Murphy, 282 Mass. 593, 598 (1933). The court glosses over the fact that the photographs described in this case had absolutely no connection with the facts of this case. Inserting into the quotation a parenthetical phrase (“here, testimony regarding the taking of pictures of the children in various poses”) does not make the evidence any more relevant to the facts of this case.

The court appears to recognize that the judge was indeed referring to Dunn’s testimony. In note 8, ante at 934, the court, purportedly attempting to show that the judge gave a limiting instruction on motive, quotes from the same section of the charge which it later claims did not refer to Dunn’s testimony. The court states: “The judge instructed the jury that ‘testimony with respect to the taking of pictures of children,’ which would include Dunn’s testimony, ‘was allowed in for the limited purpose of establishing what might have been the motive, if there was one’ ” (emphasis supplied). In note 10, ante at 936, the court states, “[W]e conclude that the instructions do not refer to Dunn’s testimony.” The court cannot have it both ways.