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SAKEAGAK v. STATE1/9/1998
is lie to Sakeagak in order to prompt him to confess.
Regarding Venable's answer, "I felt that he [Sakeagak] was responsible for her death", the admissibility of this testimony is more debatable. The issue is one of weighing probative force against potential for unfair prejudice under Evidence Rule 403.
As the prosecutor suggested, and as Judge Jeffery ruled, Venable's opinion that Sakeagak had probably killed his wife does tend to explain the confrontational tone that Venable adopted during the interview. However, Venable's interview strategy was not the subject of major dispute at trial; Sakeagak did not assert that he was confused or coerced by the confrontational style that Venable adopted during the interview. Although Venable's suspicions of Sakeagak's guilt may have been relevant to explaining his interview strategy, see Evidence Rule 401, Venable's choice of interview strategy had little importance to the decision of Sakeagak's case.
The remaining term of the equation is the potential of Venable's testimony to create unfair prejudice. In Flynn, 847 P.2d at 1075-76, and in Thompson v. State, 769 P.2d 997, 1003-04 (Alaska App. 1989), this court recognized and applied the rule that witnesses are not allowed to give their personal opinions of the defendant's guilt or innocence. In Flynn, we recognized the particular danger of allowing police officers to give their opinion that the defendant is guilty. True, jurors are generally instructed that they are not bound by the testimony of any witness, and that they are obliged to decide the case for themselves. Nevertheless, jurors may surmise that the police are privy to more facts than have been presented in court, or they may be improperly swayed by the opinion of a witness who is presented as an experienced criminal investigator.
Under the facts of this case, however, the risk was small that Venable's answer would prejudice the fairness of Sakeagak's trial. Unlike the police officer in Flynn (who told the jury that he had never seen an innocent person confess), Venable did not purport to be a "human polygraph". Venable merely testified that, when he went to interview Sakeagak the second time, he believed that Sakeagak was responsible for his wife's death.
The evidence at trial showed that, at the time of that second interview, Venable was aware of the autopsy results (which revealed that Judy Sakeagak had been strangled), and Venable was also aware that Sakeagak's account of his movements and actions on the evening of his wife's death was almost certainly false. In view of this evidence, it is quite unlikely that the jury was left wondering about the basis of Venable's suspicions.
As in Walker v. State, 674 P.2d 825, 831-32 (Alaska App. 1983), we conclude that Venable's explicit statement added nothing of substance to an inference the jury could easily draw for themselves. " he basis for [Venable's] conclusion and the possible lack of evidence to support that conclusion [were] before the jury". Id. at 832. Because the testimony had some relevance, and because the potential for unfair prejudice was negligible, we conclude that Judge Jeffery did not abuse his discretion when he overruled Sakeagak's
objection to this testimony. Hawley v. State, 614 P.2d 1349, 1361 (Alaska 1980).
Sakeagak next contends that Judge Jeffery should not have allowed the State to introduce certain statements that Sakeagak made concerning his wife's purported premonitions of death and the preparations she purportedly made for her own funeral.
At trial, the State presented evidence that, a few days after Judy Sakeagak's death, Sakeagak had a conversation with a family friend, Ran
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