I believe the argument would be that if Brown had recently robbed a convenience store and had the stolen property still on his person, then he would be particularly sensitive to attracting police attention, which could bolster the officer’s testimony that Brown reacted strongly to the officer pulling up beside him, and the way the matter escalated.
This isn’t a robbery from 5 years ago, it was a robbery 10-15 minutes prior to the shooting, and goes directly to the victim’s state of mind during the encounter.
I’d say it’s more probative than prejudicial. It bolsters the reasoning behind the officer’s defense that the victim escalated the situation, which would appear bizarre if Brown was simply walking down the street minding his own business.
Also, were any Brown’s friends present at the robbery or previously convicted of similar crimes? If this came to a trial, the prosecutions case rests upon the eyewitness testimonies from Brown’s friends. Once they take the stand, can’t the robbery (and any previous bad acts) be used to discredit the witnesses?
Sure.
At a federal trial, the applicable rule would be generally the same as at a state trial. The feds have 404(b), the prior bad acts rule, and Missouri has a very similar formulation. In both venues, the rule is that as a general principle, a prior bad act is not admissible to show that the actor behaved similarly for the events at issue at trial. In other words, you can’t admit evidence of past burglaries to prove that a burglary happened.
However, there are a number of exceptions. To take one example not relevant here, prior bad acts are admissible to show a common plan or scheme… If each prior burglary was committed by donning a clown mask, disabling the alarm by cutting phone wires, and tying the occupants up with nylon zip ties, then the present burglary in which the burglar wore a clown mask, disabled the alarm by cutting phone lines, and tied up the occupants with nylon ties can be prosecuted by mentioning the priors.
There’s another exception that is relevant here, though – a common motive.
This one’s a little tougher, and has been abused (in my opinion) by prosecutors in rape cases, who have tried to lump “lustful motives” together to explain why a prior conviction of indecent exposure supports a current charge of forcible rape (“In both cases, the accused was motivated by lustful desires!”)
But here, the accused officer would be facing a prosecution that would deny that the murdered man offered a threat. The accused officer is entitled to rebut the general inference that, all other things being equal, people do not normally attack police officers. And he can rebut that inference by the tape of the strong-arm robbery, which would allow the jury to infer that a person who has just committed a robbery would know he was likely the subject of a 911 call and that police were interested in apprehending him. He would have a motive to resist the officer that the jury otherwise wouldn’t know about.
It’s true that the tape might prejudice the jury. But the rule is that even prejudicial evidence must be admitted unless “… its probative value ‘is substantially outweighed by the danger’ of unfair prejudice.” In other words, it’s not an even balancing test – Rule 403 requires that not only a tie goes to the runner, so to speak, but the runner gets a head start. Evidence that is slightly more prejudicial than probative should still be admitted.
In US v. Williams, 343 F.3d 423 (Fifth Cir. 2003), the appeals court discussed the relevancy of evidence of a victim’s state of mind as it relates to prior bad acts:
The fact of a prior felony conviction is admissible under federal law against a non-defendant witness, as long as the crime is less then ten years prior.
So is it Brown in the video or not? I’m getting conflicting conclusions about that. It makes a huge damn difference to the victim’s state of mind.
If it isn’t Brown, would it still be admissible?
No – if it’s not Brown, it’s completely inadmissible.
racist!
I don’t see it coming in. If it’s authenticated and Wilson can be positively identified the prosecution will stipulate that Wilson stole cigars.
Not sure if this was a joke, but don’t do it again. Changing letters to capitals or lowercase in quotes shouldn’t be a hardcore rule, but it becomes so if/when that letter makes the quote take on a new meaning.
If you have any problems with the posters here, use the Pit.
FWIW, I suspect that he may have posted “RACIST!” and the board software “lowercased” the entire post including the quoted portion. It’s happened to me before, anyway.
Sorry it was meant to be a joke, reading the comment without context:
I apologize.
EDIT:I wasn’t trying to alter Bricker’s post, I had typed RACIST! in all caps and for whatever reason when posted it went lower case.
Yup, this is exactly what happened.
Yes, it is probably coming in. They will say that Brown’s state of mind is relevant to his behavior, and if there is evidence (testimony) it is Brown, then it will be admitted for the limited purpose of showing that Brown had the state of mind of a shoplifter, assuming there is testimony to that too, whatever that might be. It can’t officially be used to smear Brown’s character, but that will happen too.
I’ve seen the video, and it does not show him not paying, although it can be interpreted that way.
The court will accept an innocent mistake of identity. However that is not this case.
However the video is useless as it does not show any dire need to ruthlessly arrest anyone. There was no cause for any panic proved by the video , so it won’t help the police case. If the defense want to ask for that video to be played, they only hurt their case.
However prosecutors may be compelled to show all evidence they have , whether it suits them or not.
I figure prosecutors would use the tape if they can, to show that there never was any cause to be ruthless, undisciplined… the police officer was crazy for no reason.
That’s clearly what happened here since Bricker’s name was also lower-cased, and I’m blinking in disbelief that Idle Thoughts couldn’t have noticed this. At least it wasn’t a Warning.
gah, this whole post probably belongs in ATMB. :smack:
Pretty sure that Idle Thought moderator note is not related to the caps or non-caps of “racists”, but to modifying Bricker’s quote:
Actual Bricker quote:
grude’s quote of Bricker:
Changing “Brown” to “brown”.
Folks are saying that the system itself may have de-capitalized the entire Bricker quote as a result of putting ‘racists’ in all caps. That’s why Bricker’s name and the No are both lowercase.
Hmmm…I did a test with Bricker’s post, with the comment: TEST! and it did not change the quote, but when I post the comment: RACIST! it does put everything including the quoted material in lowercase. Forum glitch or some setting that doesn’t like the word racist in all caps.
Exactly so. Which, while perhaps grude should have noticed at the time, means he was just falling foul of a software “feature” that I thought IT should have known about. Admittedly I also had the option of not playing Mr Buttinski, but eh.