State v. Hamilton ( 1992 )

STEWART, Justice

(concurring).

In my view, the trial court properly rejected the defendant’s proposed instruction with respect to the weight the jury could give to the fingerprint evidence because the fingerprint evidence was not the only evidence linking the defendant to the crime and, more important, because the proposed instruction could have given the jurors the impression that they should consider only the fingerprint evidence on that point. On the facts of this case, the instruction could have been confusing and misleading.

Nevertheless, an instruction on fingerprint evidence along the lines of that proposed by the defendant may well be appropriate, or even mandatory, when there is no other significant evidence pertaining to identity. For example, if the only evidence linking a defendant to a crime is fingerprint evidence and ambiguous circumstantial evidence as to when the fingerprint was impressed, an instruction would be appropriate and, perhaps, required.

In addition, I do not believe that the admission of Rita Weatherby’s statement that the defendant had hit her, made in the context of explaining why she had changed the alibi story that she had given to the police, was error. This Court has been careful to require that prior crime evidence have special relevance to the facts of the case, and I certainly do not suggest departing from that fundamental rule of fairness. Nevertheless, in this case, I believe that the statement was within our rules allowing for admissibility since it was highly relevant to explain Weatherby’s alibi stories. See generally State v. Forsyth, 641 P.2d 1172 (Utah 1982). In my view, the majority’s application of the harmless error doctrine is superfluous.