Court Opinion

ID: 9785237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:11:32.064204+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:12.970369
License: Public Domain

Dooley, J.,
¶ 14. concurring. I concur in this case because defendant failed to object to the testimony of the witnesses who testified to prior incidents of abuse. If defendant had objected to the testimony of those witnesses, the objection would have triggered the kind of detailed Rule 403 analysis that was needed in this case. Since there was no objection, it is impossible to know where that analysis would have led.
¶ 15. I start with the majority’s comment that, in the Court’s opinion, evidence of prior bad acts did not dominate the trial. Ante, ¶ 11. I think that conclusion is misleading and generally wrong. The trial in this case was exceedingly brief. The entire trial, including a pretrial discussion about jury instructions and other matters, the jury deliberations and verdict, and a post-trial discussion about a presentence investigation (PSI) report and scheduling sentencing, occurred in one day and takes up 224 transcript pages. Of that, the presentation of evidence takes up 162 pages.
¶ 16. The evidence consisted of seven witnesses. Two of these witnesses related to the separate charge of failing to appear when defendant was summoned to court, a conviction defendant has not appealed. Of the remaining five, one was an expert on the dynamics of domestic violence who testified that “I don’t know anything about this case.” This left four witnesses to testify about the abuse, one of whom was the complainant.
¶ 17. The first two of these witnesses were third parties who knew something of an earlier act of domestic violence and nothing about the incident for which defendant was charged. One was a friend of defendant, who testified that defendant once told him that defendant had struck the complainant while they were in Maryland. The second was a nurse, who saw the complainant in August 2007 and testified that the complainant reported that she had been assaulted by defendant, her boyfriend. The nurse testified that she had examined the complainant and found an injury to her eye and black-and-blue marks on her arm.
¶ 18. The third witness was the Williston police officer whom the complainant called on the day of the incident. He testified that she called the police on March 31, 2008, the date of the incident according to the information, and that he took a statement from her at the police station on the day after the incident and visited her in her home the day after that. He testified that the complainant was very seared and shaken and was crying. The complainant stated that defendant had choked, hit, and restrained her. The officer also testified that the Williston police had answered a call at some time in the past from a roommate of the complainant who stated that she had observed defendant physically abusing the complainant.
¶ 19. The only other witness was the complainant. She described the incident for which defendant was charged over five transcript pages and further described it to some extent in three other pages. She described the three earlier incidents in the better part of nineteen pages.
*592¶20. In summary, there was much more testimony about the former incidents than there was about the incident for which defendant was charged. The testimony about the charged incident came only from the complainant, with no corroboration other than the testimony of the police officer who interviewed her. Testimony about the earlier Maryland incident came from the complainant and two independent witnesses. The testimony included evidence of the complainant’s medical condition after the Maryland incident, evidence that was noticeably absent with respect to the charged incident. The police witness testified about the report of earlier abuse from the roommate. Fairly characterized, the testimony about earlier incidents of abuse — that is, about prior bad acts — dominated the trial.
¶ 21.1 also believe that another clarification about the evidence is important. The State charged that defendant assaulted the complainant on or about March 31, 2008. The Williston police officer testified that the complainant called him on that date. The prosecutor never asked the complainant to provide the date of the incident, and she testified only that it occurred in March 2008. She specifically testified that she waited a week before calling the police because she was afraid of what defendant might do to her. I emphasize this evidence because it is debatable whether the complainant significantly delayed reporting the 2008 abuse incident and particularly whether she sought to remain living with defendant after that incident.
¶ 22.1 stated my views on prior-bad-aet evidence as context evidence in domestic abuse cases in State v. Hendricks. 173 Vt. 132, 142-45, 787 A.2d 1270, 1278-80 (2001) (Dooley, J., concurring). The Court made clear in that decision, as we have in others, that the prior-bad-act evidence is admissible so that the jury is not presented with a single incongruous and incredible act of domestic violence, separated from the historical context, and so they might understand the actions of the defendant during the charged incident. Id. at 139, 787 A.2d at 1276. It is not admissible to prove the defendant’s propensity to inflict domestic violence on the complainant or to show that because he engaged in domestic violence in the past he probably did it on the date charged in the information. Id. I argued that evidence of prior incidents of domestic violence on the same individual should be admissible under Rule 404(b) if “testified to by that victim.” Id. at 143, 787 A.2d at 1279. I indicated that “the calculus may be different when the State offers an additional witness to prove the prior uncharged misconduct” and that this “situation should be addressed by applying V.R.E. 403, evaluating the State’s need for the additional witness in light of the other evidence and the likely effect on the trial.” Id. at 145, 787 A.2d at 1280.
¶ 23. The point of those observations is particularly demonstrated here. To the extent that the State is proving the fact and detail of the earlier incidents, in a way that it is not proving the charged incident, its purpose is primarily propensity and not context. The State can fully show context, as it did here, by the testimony of the complainant and the expert on the dynamics of domestic violence. The testimony of the complainant with respect to the charged incident does not appear incongruous or unbelievable.
¶ 24. In this case, the State used the nurse to show the extent of the complainant’s injuries from the incident in Maryland. Although the complainant testified that she went to the hospital for treatment after the charged incident, the State offered no evidence of her medical condition at that time. I think its purpose was transparent — it wanted the jury to see the type of injuries defendant has inflicted to argue that defendant inflicted those injuries here. If the State wants to *593get into the complainant’s injuries, it should be required to offer evidence of them for the charged incident, not for the earlier incidents.
¶ 25. The trial judge never conducted the kind of Rule 403 analysis I called for in Hendricks, probably in part because the State never disclosed that it was relying on independent witnesses to show prior bad acts. The court never performed such an analysis at the time of admission of the prior-bad-aet evidence because there was no objection at that time. Thus, we cannot know what the trial judge would have concluded in this discretionary analysis.
¶ 26. Nevertheless, I seriously question whether any of the testimony from the third-party witnesses should have been admitted. On the one hand, the need for context evidence was less than in our earlier cases. While it is clear that the complainant delayed reporting the earlier incidents and remained living with defendant despite the abuse, there is a serious question whether she delayed reporting after the charged incident, except for a short period to ensure her own safety. There is no evidence that she intended to keep living with defendant once the March 2008 incident occurred. It makes no sense to allow the admission of the prior conduct in order to explain why the complainant stayed with defendant in the past — her conduct in staying with defendant in an abusive relationship never reaches the jury except when the prior-bad-act evidence is admitted.
¶ 27. On the other side, there is serious risk that the jury will believe that the State proved that because defendant abused the complainant in the past, as the independent witnesses testified, he must have done it on the date charged. As I stated in Hendricks, it is highly unlikely that when a complainant testifies to prior incidents of abuse, as well as to the charged incident, the jury would believe the testimony of the prior incidents, disbelieve the testimony of the charged incident, and convict anyway based on the defendant’s propensity. Id. at 145, 787 A.2d at 1280. My conclusion is different if the State starts using additional testimonial evidence to prove the prior incidents but offers no such evidence to support the charged incident. Thus, the risk of prejudice is greater than in earlier cases where we have allowed prior-bad-act evidence as context.
¶ 28. I concur because there was no objection to the testimony of the third-party witnesses. I am explaining my position, as I did in Hendricks, to make clear my view that all context evidence of prior bad acts is not automatically admissible in domestic violence cases. The trial courts must carefully examine the probative value of such evidence in relation to the danger of unfair prejudice, as Rule 403 requires, before deciding whether to admit the evidence.
¶ 29. I am authorized to state that Justice Johnson joins this concurrence.