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State v. Hendricks11/16/2001
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. See 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) ("Evidence 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, 622 (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, 649 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] it 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
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