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Wooten v. State11/9/2005
l exception for unavailable witnesses. See Ark. R. Evid. 804(b)(5) (2004). The State emphasizes that the testimony was evidence of appellant's motive and intent, necessary to refute appellant's defense that portrayed Ms. Stone as a vindictive, sexually promiscuous stalker and himself as an innocent victim of her wiles, who only resorted to her horrific murder because she goaded him into it. As the State explained, appellant murdered Ms. Stone, thereby unequivocally prohibiting her from testifying as a witness against him.
The state's argument that Lieutenant Dickinson's testimony was offered to prove motive echoes the reasoning of our supreme court's decision in Dednam v. State, --- Ark. ----, --- S.W.3d ---- (January 6, 2005). In Dednam, the appellant's sole allegation of error was that the circuit court erred in allowing a police detective to testify to statements made to her by the murder victim with respect to another case, which allegedly constituted a motive for Dednam's acts. While the State is not required to prove motive, the State is entitled to introduce evidence showing all circumstances which either explain the act, show a motive for acting, or illustrate the accused's state of mind. Id. (citing Richmond v. State, 302 Ark. 498, 791 S.W.2d 691 (1990)). Where the purpose of evidence is to disclose a motive for the murder, anything and everything that might have influenced the commission of the act may be shown and the State is entitled to introduce evidence of circumstances that explain the act, show a motive, or illustrate the accused's state of mind. Hudson v. State, 85 Ark. App. 85, 145 S.W.3d 380 (2004). But even so, establishing motive does not equate to proving the truth of whether or not an appellant had committed the act complained of in the testimony. Dednam, supra.
In this case, it was not necessary for the State to prove the truth of whether appellant had bruised Ms. Stone's arm. A jury determination of whether appellant had bruised Ms. Stone ten days before he killed her pales in comparison with appellant's confession regarding the trauma he inflicted upon Ms. Stone the day he killed her. Where a statement is admitted for a legitimate, non-hearsay purpose, that is, not to prove the truth of the assertions therein, the statement is not hearsay under the traditional rules of evidence and the non-hearsay aspect raises no confrontation-clause concerns. Dednam, supra, (citing Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409 (1985) (holding that Street's confrontation-clause rights were not violated by the introduction into evidence of an accomplice's confession for the non-hearsay purpose of rebutting Street's testimony that his confession was coercively derived from the accomplice's statement) (cited by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (2004), for the proposition that the Confrontation Clause does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted)). Barrett v. State, 354 Ark. 187, 119 S.W.3d 485 (2003) is also instructive on this issue. There, when the daughter found her mother, she noticed a bruise on her mother's head. Her mother, the murder victim, made the statement to her daughter that following an argument between her and appellant, that appellant had hit her. This statement was made a year and a half before the victim's murder. In the present case, Lieutenant Dickinson testified that the victim came to him ten days prior to her murder and explained to Dickinson that she was having trouble with appellant harassing her at work and that she feared she would lose her job. Dickinson testified that she appeared afraid of appellant. She also told him that she and appellant had argued and during the argument, a
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