holding evidence of defendant’s prior acts in past relationships was admissible to establish a common plan or scheme under Pa.R.E. 404(b)(2), where in each instance Arrington “(1) monitored his girlfriend’s daily activities; (2) resorted to violence when his partner wanted to end a relationship or interacted with other men; (3) inflicted head or neck injuries with his fist, a handgun, or an edged weapon; and (4) harmed or threatened to harm members of his girlfriend’s family or male acquaintances that he viewed as romantic rivals”
How later courts described this case
- holding evidence of defendant’s prior acts in past relationships was admissible to establish a common plan or scheme under Pa.R.E. 404(b)(2), where in each instance Arrington “(1) monitored his girlfriend’s daily activities; (2) resorted to violence when his partner wanted to end a relationship or interacted with other men; (3) inflicted head or neck injuries with his fist, a handgun, or an edged weapon; and (4) harmed or threatened to harm members of his girlfriend’s family or male acquaintances that he viewed as romantic rivals”
- finding that the absence of a Simmons instruction did not violate appellant's due process rights "[i]n light of [his] counsel's lengthy explanation of the meaning of a life sentence, which clearly conveyed that [a]ppellant would be ineligible for parole under Pennsylvania law"
- concluding that the probative evidence of the defendant’s prior crimes toward ex-girlfriends to show common scheme to control through violence and intimidation outweighed prejudicial effect to the defendant from its admission
- holding where trial court did not have benefit of Holmes decision and thus did not engage in analysis regarding whether ineffectiveness claims fell into either exception to general rule of deferral, appellant should have opportunity to pursue all ineffectiveness claims, not merely ones set forth in direct appeal; therefore, ineffectiveness claims were dismissed without prejudice to appellant to raise them in subsequently filed PCRA petition
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
DISSENTING OPINION
Justice SAYLOR.
The majority posits that the panoply of other-bad-acts evidence presented by the Commonwealth was not introduced to establish Appellant’s propensity for violence, but rather, was offered to establish his identity as the killer. See Majority Opinion, at 844. However, as the decisional law gravitates further and further away from the centering ground of signature crimes, see 1 McCormiok, Evidence § 190 (4th ed. 1992), the identity/propensity distinction devolves to a matter of semantics. It may well be, as the majority appears to suggest, that Appellant’s past violent conduct directed toward women was a key aspect of the prosecution. See Majority Opinion, at 844-45. Nevertheless, upon review of this record, I am unable to sup *861 port the majority’s conclusion that the Commonwealth’s case against Appellant was not, in material part, character and propensity based.