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SAKEAGAK v. STATE1/9/1998
som Agnassaga. Sakeagak told Agnassaga that Judy had been having chest pains for some time. He also told Agnassaga that, during the week before her death, Judy had had premonitions of death: she had selected the Bible verses to be read at her funeral, and she had purchased the dress in which she wished to be buried.
Sometime after this conversation, Agnassaga and his wife went to Sakeagak's house to pick up the funeral dress. However, when Sakeagak showed them the dress, Agnassaga and his wife recognized that the dress was not newly-purchased: it was the dress that Judy had worn to the Agnassagas' wedding five years before.
Sakeagak's attorney objected that this testimony was purely character evidence, and therefore unfairly prejudicial, because its only relevance was to suggest that Sakeagak was a liar. The prosecutor responded that Sakeagak's lies demonstrated his consciousness of guilt. Judge Jeffery ruled that the probative value of the testimony outweighed its potential prejudicial effect. The defense attorney refused Judge Jeffery's offer to give the jury a limiting instruction; the attorney asserted that the prejudicial effect of the testimony could not be cured.
On appeal, Sakeagak concedes that he lied to Agnassaga, but he argues that evidence of his lies should have been excluded because it was not relevant, and because its only effect was to show that Sakeagak was a person of bad character — a liar who perhaps did not take his wife's death seriously. We disagree.
If evidence of Sakeagak's lies had been offered simply to show that Sakeagak was a person of questionable character, the evidence would have been inadmissible. See Alaska Evidence Rules 404(a) and 404(b). However, this was not the case. Sakeagak's false statements to Agnassaga were relevant because, potentially, they showed that Sakeagak was consciously attempting to mislead Agnassaga about Judy's death — attempting to falsely portray her death as the result of pre-existing illness or physical condition. From such deliberate falsehoods, the jury could infer that Sakeagak was conscious of his own guilt. Additionally, such lies were evidence that Sakeagak had acted with the culpable mental state required for first-degree murder.
Sakeagak suggests that there might be other explanations for Sakeagak's decision to lie about what his wife did and said in the days preceding her death. In particular, Sakeagak suggests that his statements might have been the product of extreme grief, an attempt to cope with the recent loss of a loved one. However, the fact that there are other plausible interpretations of the evidence does not negate the relevance of that evidence to evince Sakeagak's consciousness of guilt. Sakeagak's arguments go to the weight of the evidence — a determination for the jury — rather than its relevance. See Charles v. State, 780 P.2d 377, 383 (Alaska App. 1989); Dyer v. State, 666 P.2d 438, 449 (Alaska App. 1983); Elson v. State, 659 P.2d 1195, 1201 (Alaska 1983) (when a defendant's conduct can reasonably be interpreted as inculpatory, alternative explanations of the defendant's conduct "go to the weight rather than the admissibility of the evidence"). See also United States v. Newman, 6 F.3d 623, 628 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that a defendant's false exculpatory statements were circumstantial evidence of the defendant's consciousness of guilt).
When Sakeagak objected to this evidence, Judge Jeffery complied with the mandate of Evidence Rule 403 by weighing the potential prejudicial effect of the evidence against its probative value. The judge determined that this evidence was relevant for purposes other than to show Sakeagak's character, and that it was more probat
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