When Can Defendant Pleading Self-Defense Introduce Evidence of Alleged Attacker’s Past Violent Acts?
From People v. Guerra, decided today by New York’s high court:
We are asked once again to discard the rule recognized in People v. Rodawald (N.Y. 1904) and People v. Miller (N.Y. 1976) that “preclud[es] the admission of prior violent acts of victims in cases where a claim of justification is made” unless the defendant was aware of the specific acts at the time of the assault. We decline to do so.
Defendant stabbed the victim in the chest with a small knife, causing life-threatening injuries. At trial, the court determined that defendant was entitled to raise a justification defense. Defendant sought to introduce evidence of the specific violent conduct underlying four of the victim’s prior youthful offender adjudications to prove that the victim was the initial aggressor with respect to deadly physical force. Supreme Court, in accordance with Miller, prohibited the jury from considering that evidence for that purpose….
“Youthful Offender status provides youth four key benefits: relief from [a] record of a criminal conviction, reduced sentences, privacy from public release of the youth’s name pending the Youthful Offender determination on misdemeanor offenses only, and confidentiality of the Youthful Offender record.” Youthful offender designations are given to those who have “a real likelihood of turning their lives around,” and the protection gives these individuals “the opportunity for a fresh start, without a criminal record.” Given these policy concerns, we see no reason to revisit the Miller rule in this case.
{[Under the dissent’s proposed rule, a] defendant accused of murdering a 17–year–old could, if the victim happened to have a prior Youthful Offender determination, offer direct evidence of specific conduct committed by the victim as a child to show the killing was justified. Our exclusion of such evidence is neither “archaic,” “obsolete,” nor “out of step with other jurisdictions.” To the contrary, defendant seeks to offer evidence of prior bad acts that would not be admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence [404] or in nearly any state that has adopted those rules.}
Defendant’s additional challenge to the constitutionality of the Miller rule is without merit.
Judge Rowan Wilson, joined by Judge Jenny Rivera, dissented; the dissent is long, but here are some excerpts:
Imagine for a moment that you are a juror in a criminal case. On trial is a young man with no history of violence. He is charged with stabbing another young man, one who on four prior occasions has, without provocation, assaulted and beaten up strangers. The defendant says he stabbed the victim with a penknife attached to his keys because the other man wielded a broken beer bottle as a weapon, hit him and was attempting to cut him with the beer bottle. The victim says he never had a beer bottle, never threatened the defendant, and it was the defendant who pulled out a knife and stabbed him following a minute of name-calling back and forth.
As a juror, would you feel better able to determine who was the initial aggressor if you knew of the victim’s history of violence, or would you be better able to determine the truth without any information about the victim’s prior violent attacks? Under the doctrine the majority leaves in place today, no court can ever allow you to consider that information in deciding who was the initial aggressor.
Santino Guerra stabbed Dylan Pitt with a penknife, after a verbal altercation between strangers turned violent. Mr. Guerra claimed he was acting in self-defense, and the trial court concluded that he was entitled to an instruction as to
Article from Reason.com
