Court Opinion

ID: 9753485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:15:34.342064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:29.769528
License: Public Domain

Skoglund, J.,
concurring. I concur with the majority’s opinion but write separately to express my concerns about its justification for admitting evidence of defendant’s prior assaults on the victim. I believe that the prior assaults were admissible to refute defendant’s claims of self-defense and accidental injury to the victim. However, I do not believe that they were admissible in this case to provide “context” for the charged offense. In all other respects, I join the majority’s opinion.
*146In response to the State’s motion to admit the prior assaults, defense counsel acknowledged that “we will probably be getting into some issue of self-defense.” That turned out to be an understatement. In his opening argument, defense counsel told the jurors that “the heart of this case” is “whether or not a man who is kicked in the groin acts recklessly in trying to get the person who kicked him away and to leave that scene.” Defense counsel also told the jurors that the injuries the victim claimed defendant had inflicted upon her, for which she received emergency room treatment, were actually incurred the day before the incident when the victim fell down while trying to assist an infirm defendant into the house. Defendant’s trial testimony was consistent with these statements, depicting the victim as the aggressor during the incident in question and claiming that his hand made contact with the victim’s mouth only when he raised it in an effort to deflect her blows.
Evidence Rule 404(b) prevents the introduction of other crimes, wrongs or acts to prove the character of a person, and to suggest that, with respect to the charge the defendant is facing, he or she acted in conformity with that character — he did it before; therefore, he must have done it this time. If bad acts are admitted to show only some propensity to commit the charged offense, they are unequivocally inadmissible. The rule permits the admission of such evidence, however, if it is probative of any other fact that is of consequence to the determination of the case, such as intent, plan, opportunity, identity or absence of mistake or accident. The controlling question is “whether the evidence is relevant. . . ‘does it tend to prove any fact material to the issues in the case?’ ” State v. Catsam, 148 Vt. 366, 380-81, 534 A.2d 184, 194 (1987) (quoting State v. Howard, 108 Vt. 137, 152, 183 A. 497, 504 (1936)). And, if relevant, does its probative value substantially outweigh its prejudicial effect? V.R.E. 403.
Here, I see no reversible error in the trial court’s decision to admit the evidence, given the positions defendant took at trial. Evidence of the prior assaults on this victim were relevant to refute claims of accident or self-defense. See State v. Elvin, 481 N.W.2d 571, 575 (Minn. Ct. App. 1992) (evidence of prior assaults against same victim admissible to refute defendant’s claim that injuries were caused by accident); Wilson v. State, 14 P.3d 912, 918-19 (Wyo. 2000) (evidence of prior bad acts against domestic assault victim admissible to refute claims of self-defense or accident). Defendant put the claim of self-*147defense and accidental injury in issue, and thus made the evidence of his prior assaultive behavior relevant.1
Admittedly, the evidence strikes fairly close to demonstrating a character trait of the defendant to abuse his girlfriend. Yet this fact alone does not make it inadmissible. If, as here, the evidence is properly offered for a permissible purpose, then it need not be excluded simply because it also implicates the character of the accused.
I do not accept, however, the majority’s position that the prior assaults were admissible to provide “context” for the charged offense. In reaching this conclusion, I recognize that there is a trend across the country toward leniency in admitting prior assaults against victims of domestic violence because of the nature of the crime and the difficult proof problems posed by conflicting accounts of domestic violence. Domestic abuse is a prevalent crime with a high recidivism rate; yet, the offense often goes unreported, and when it is reported, the victim is often the only witness. Fuzzard v. State, 13 P.3d 1163, 1168 (Alaska Ct. App. 2000). In many cases, domestic assault prosecutions come down to a credibility contest between the alleged abuser and the victim. Like child abuse, domestic violence is rarely a single, isolated act. Rather, it is a recurring and escalating pattern of behavior in which each episode of abuse is interconnected through the abuser’s ultimate goal of obtaining control over the victim. J. Aiken & J. Murphy, Evidence Issues in Domestic Violence Civil Cases, 34 Fam. L. Q. 43, 56 (2000); see also State v. Sanders, 168 Vt. 60, 62, 716 A.2d 11, 13 (1998) (domestic violence is controlling behavior aimed at gaining victim’s compliance through repeated incidents of abuse).
With greater understanding of the pathology of abusive relationships, courts have shown an increased willingness to permit historical evidence of domestic violence. In certain circumstances, it would be unfair to allow the jury to evaluate the victim’s credibility — for example, when the victim has acted in a manner seemingly at odds with the claim of abuse — without a full knowledge of the dynamics of the relationship between the accuser and the accused. *148See State v. Clark, 926 P.2d 194, 206 (Haw. 1996); State v. Grant, 920 P.2d 609, 614 (Wash. Ct. App. 1996).
Consequently, both courts and legislatures have been more receptive in recent years to allowing the admission of prior assaults in domestic assault prosecutions. Some jurisdictions have made explicit rule changes that permit the admission of prior assaults in domestic assault cases for any reason as long as the probative value of the evidence outweighs its prejudicial impact. See Cal. Evid. Code § 1109 (2001); Minn. Stat. §634.20; Col. Rev. Stat. §18-6-801.5 (finding that admission of prior assaults on domestic assault victim is necessary in some cases because of cyclical nature of offense). Other jurisdictions have simply taken a more expansive view of the Rule 404(b) exceptions in the context of domestic assault cases to achieve a similar result without a rule change. See Comment, Beating Again and Again and Again: Why Washington Needs a New Rule of Evidence Admitting Prior Acts of Domestic Violence, 75 Wash. L. Rev. 973, 1000-01 (2000) (noting that some courts have stretched Rule 404(b) exceptions in domestic assault cases, “thereby warping the definitions of these exceptions for other crimes”); Comment, The Search for Truth: Admitting Evidence of Prior Abuse in Cases of Domestic Violence, 20 U. Haw. L. Rev. 221, 240-53 (1998) (discussing trends in admitting evidence of prior assaults in domestic assault prosecutions); State v. Hedger, 811 P.2d 1170, 1174 (Kan. 1991) (“[E]vidence of a discordant marital relationship is admissible, independent of [Rule 404(b)], to show the ongoing relationship between the parties.”).
Nevertheless, this Court has explicitly stated that “we have no special exception to Rule 404(b) for sexual misconduct cases, neither have we adopted special, more liberal, interpretations of Rule 404(b) to allow the admission of prior bad act evidence in such cases, especially when we would not admit similar evidence in other cases.” State v. Winter, 162 Vt. 388, 392, 648 A.2d 624, 627 (1994). The closest we have come to a special rule is allowing the State to show that the act charged in a child sexual abuse prosecution “is only one of a continuous series of acts” with the same victim. Id. at 393, 648 A.2d at 627. In such cases, we “allow the victim to tell enough of the story to preserve its integrity as a credible one.” State v. Forbes, 161 Vt. 327, 333, 640 A.2d 13, 16 (1993). But that is only appropriate where the “context” of historical events “is so interwoven with the crime [that] *149it cannot be separated without skewing the event made the subject of the charge.” Id. That situation is not present in this case.
Nor is this a case in which the “context” evidence was admitted because the victim was dead and unavailable to testify as to the true nature of the relationship, or because the victim recanted her complaint of abuse, refused to testify, or behaved in a way that made her claim of assault seem incongruous. “Context” evidence has been most often admitted as relevant due to situations such as these. For example, in State v. Green, 652 P.2d 697, 701 (Kan. 1982), the defendant, on trial for murder of his wife, claimed that someone else killed his wife before he arrived on the scene. Evidence of his prior assaults against his wife was probative on the issue of identity and was admitted “to establish the relationship of the parties, the existence of a continuing course of conduct between the parties, or to corroborate the testimony of the complaining witnesses as to the act charged.” In Grant, evidence of prior assaults by the defendant on the victim was admitted to explain why the victim permitted contact with the abuser after the assault and then minimized the degree of violence after being contacted by the abuser from jail. “Ms. Grant’s credibility was a central issue at trial. The jury was entitled to evaluate her credibility with full knowledge of the dynamics of a relationship marked by domestic violence and the effect such a relationship has on the victim.” 920 P.2d at 614. In State v. Kelly, 624 N.E.2d 733, 735 (Ohio Ct. App. 1993), the victim was permitted to testify that the reason she did not try to escape or retaliate was because she knew, based on nine years of abuse, that the defendant would either physically abuse or kill her. Moreover, the reason she did not scream when the defendant forced her and their sons into the car and abducted them was because of an earlier incident when he beat her for screaming. Id. And finally, in Clark, prior incidents of domestic violence between the victim and the defendant were admitted to show “the basis for [the victim’s] recantation at trial.” 926 P.2d at 206; see Smith v. State, 669 A.2d 1, 5 (Del. 1995) (evidence of repeated acts of violence admitted to establish course of conduct to show victim’s lack of consent to sexual intercourse and to explain why she recanted her prior statements and testified that sexual relations were consensual).
Like the trial court, the majority relies on the reasoning in State v. Sanders for admitting the two prior assaults based on “context.” But, in that case, we held that the prior bad act evidence went to prove *150that defendant meant to intimidate and threaten the victim2 — and “to put the victim’s recantation of prior statements into context for the jury.” Sanders, 168 Vt. at 62-63, 716 A.2d at 13 (noting that “[vjictims of domestic abuse are likely to change their stories out of fear or retribution, or even out of misguided affection”).3 Given the victim’s recantation of her prior statements, Sanders is exactly the type of case in which to provide the jury with “context” evidence. That is certainly not the situation here. The victim in this case did not equivocate in her testimony about the charged assault. Indeed, she testified fully in support of the State’s case. This was a credibility contest between the two witnesses to the event. There was no need to paint a picture of the relationship between defendant and his girlfriend in order for the jury to make its assessment of who was more credible.
I believe that the “context” rationale is an appropriate approach in certain cases, such as in Sanders. Applied in this case, however, the rationale has no purpose and simply becomes an excuse to admit all evidence of prior assaults against victims of domestic violence. If that is the path we are to take — and I am not convinced that it is the right path in all cases — it should be done through the rule amendment process rather than by dubious or incomplete analysis that warps the existing rules for other crimes. In this case, we should affirm admission of the prior assaults to refute defendant’s claims of self-defense and accidental injury, without rationalizing their admission based on “context.”

 The majority notes that one incident, the 1993 assault, satisfied an element of 13 V.S.A § 1044(a)(2) requiring a prior domestic assault conviction. Because defendant stipulated to the conviction, however, this reasoning cannot support the introduction of the details of that prior assault.

 Sanders was charged with first-degree aggravated domestic assault under 13 V.S.A. § 1043(a)(2), which requires proof of intent to “threaten” the victim. As applicable in Sanders, 13 V.S.A. § 1042, domestic assault, is defined as “wilfully causes a family or household member to fear imminent serious bodily injury.”

 My Brother Dooley and I disagree on what was recanted in Sanders. The facts of the case make clear that the victim denied not only the substantive facts of her prior sworn statements concerning the two “prior bad acts” that the court admitted, but, on the witness stand, she specifically recanted prior statements concerning the charged offense, claiming on the stand that the defendant did not have a knife and denying that she believed he was going to kill her. Thus, allowing “prior bad act” evidence was appropriate to provide “context” to aid in the jury’s understanding of the recantation. It may be that the decision in Sanders imprecisely sets forth these factual underpinnings. If I am wrong in my understanding of Sanders, then this concurrence comes too late, and the Court has already adopted a special exception to Rule 404(b) for sexual misconduct cases.