Court Opinion

ID: 9791202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:07:27.675651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:34.770960
License: Public Domain

ROSE, Justice,
dissenting, with whom McCLINTOCK, Justice, joins.
I dissent because I believe that evidence of prior bad acts by the defendant was improperly admitted and highly prejudicial.
THE EVIDENCE
The defendant was accused of inflicting a blow to the head of Alysia, an infant between nine and ten weeks old, on October 31, 1979. The only evidence linking appellant to the crime is circumstantial. The appellant had sole custody of the child for a certain period and the mother-a Ms. Snyder, also had sole custody of the child for other periods of the day. She testified that she did not abuse the child, even though she did, in the course of her testimony, say that she was sleeping in the same bed as the child that morning and could possibly have struck the child with her elbow while turning or tossing in her sleep. Appellant also denied abusing the child.
Over strenuous objection, the prosecutor was permitted to ask the following “child-beating” and “wife-beating” questions:
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Grabill, that on numerous times in October of 1975 . . . that you would pick Christopher [Grabill’s five- or six-month-old son] up, put your hand over his mouth until the baby passed out and the eyes rolled in the back of his head?”
“.. . Isn’t it true that you beat her [the mother of the child alleged to have been abused in this case] in May of 1979 and blackened her eyes?”
“Do you recall .. . getting mad at Christopher [in 1977] because he had spilled talcum powder on the friends’ pool table?

“And do you recall picking him up by the neck and holding him in the air and hitting him on the buttocks for doing that?”
*815“... You don’t recall [in 1974] taking Kimberly [Grabill’s four-year-old daughter] into the bathroom, locking the bathroom door and beating her about the back buttocks and all over her body? ...”
To impeach the defendant’s denial of these allegations, and over insistent defense objection, the State was allowed to produce various witnesses to substantiate and embellish these accusations of prior bad acts. For example, Mrs. Bohannon, Kimberly’s mother, the defendant’s former wife, testified that after the incident in 1974 she took a picture of the child to her attorney. From the witness stand, she was permitted to testify that, under the law of Michigan, where she and the defendant were living at the time, it was not possible to prosecute someone for a single instance of child abuse. This former wife further testified that she told the defendant she would kill him if he ever laid a hand on one her children again. The picture of Kimberly after the purported 1974 incident was shown to the jury in this case.
In addition to Mrs. Bohannon’s testimony, the State also called Christopher’s mother, a woman the appellant was still married to but with whom he no longer lived. She elaborated on the incidents with Christopher.
To complete the trilogy of women with whom the defendant had abrasive relations, Alysia’s mother, Ms. Snyder, with whom the defendant was living, was allowed to describe a beating which she said she had suffered at the hands of the appellant. To substantiate this witness’ claim, the court allowed the State to call a detective who testified that he had investigated a fight between the defendant and Ms. Snyder and that the defendant had confessed to beating up the woman.
The prosecutor was also allowed to introduce testimony having to do with the defendant’s explanation of these incidents. The State showed that the appellant had tried to justify the alleged smothering incident as an exercise in aid of the development of the child’s lungs. According to the State’s testimony, the beating of Kimberly resulted because the child did not want the appellant to change a bandaid on her forehead. The State sought to show that Christopher was struck because he spilled talcum powder on a pool table.
THE LAW
In Kwallek v. State, Wyo., 596 P.2d 1372 (1979), Kwallek had engaged in a fight with a barroom bouncer. He was charged with aggravated assault and battery, and the issue at trial was, essentially, who was at fault. Mr. Kwallek was convicted and appealed on a number of grounds, one of which was his cross-examination concerning prior fights or altercations in which he had been involved. After the question was unsuccessfully objected to, the defendant conceded having participated in other fights. We held that it was error for the prosecutor to question the defendant about past misconduct unrelated in time to the crime for which he was charged. Citing another error in the case as well, we reversed and remanded for a new trial.
In arguing that the prosecutor’s question was not error, the State urged that Kwallek had placed his own credibility in question by denying that he was the aggressor. The State also argued that Kwallek’s admission of past fights was admissible to show a course of conduct consisting of the propensity for public fighting. We discussed thoroughly and dismissed these arguments. We said:
“. .. The effect of admitting this evidence for the purpose offered (attacking credibility) or any purpose conceived of by Lindsay [State v. Lindsay, 77 Wyo. 410, 317 P.2d 506 (1957)], supra, would be to invite the very dangers that we have warned about in Dorador v. State, Wyo., 520 P.2d 230 (1974), Gabrielson v. State, Wyo., 510 P.2d 534 (1973), Rosencrance v. State, 33 Wyo. 360, 239 P. 952 (1925), and Newell v. State, Wyo., 548 P.2d 8 (1976)-namely, it requires the defendant to meet and explain other acts than those with which he is charged. Furthermore, the admission of this testimony has a tendency to lead the jury to believe that it is *816permissible to convict for conduct other than that with which the defendant is charged.”
The allegations of child abuse against Kimberly in 1974 and against Christopher in 1975 and 1977 are remote in time from the incidents of October 31, 1979, with respect to which Grabill was being tried concerning his guilt or innocence. The allegation of beating Alysia’s mother in 1979 after a marital-type fight was more related in time, but otherwise hopelessly irrelevant.
I cannot shake the apprehension that the tale of justice denied in Michigan-replete with the evidence that the defendant’s former wife would have offered a Michigan court-deprived the defendant of a fair trial on the crime charged. Nor can I dispose of the fear that the evidence of the defendant’s confession to an assault against Aly-sia’s mother improperly influenced the jury’s deliberations of the issue having to do with whether the defendant committed a crime against Alysia. I cannot conclude, as the majority does, that the testimony of two hostile ex-wives and a mistress with respect to other and unrelated matters did not constitute impermissible character evidence.
I would have reversed.