State v. Ledet
| Decision Date | 11 April 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 58829,58829 |
| Citation | 345 So.2d 474 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Clarence LEDET. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Harold L. Savoie, Duson Bar, Inc., Lafayette, for defendant-appellant.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Nathan Stansbury, Dist. Atty., Byron P. Legendre, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.
Defendant Clarence Ledet was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for committing the crime of aggravated rape upon one Ms. C in Lafayette, Louisiana in March of 1975. Because we find merit in one of defendant's assignments of error, we will not discuss any of his other assignments, or the propriety of the sentence, but reverse his conviction and sentence and remand the case to the district court.
That assignment in which we find reversible error, assignment number two, concerns the admission into evidence of the testimony of one Ms. D who told the jury of defendant's brutalization and kidnapping of her, and of various sexual offenses committed against her some five months after the rape for which defendant was on trial. In order to understand the error here discussed, some background is necessary. Two days before trial, on June 14, 1976, the state filed notice of intent to introduce extraneous offenses to prove 'motive, system, intent and identity.' The offenses were described as follows:
'. . . the crimes of Kidnapping and Crime Against Nature, which had occurred on August 26, 1975, beginning in Galveston, Texas, leading through Houston, Texas and into Louisiana and ending in Eunice, Louisiana on August 27, 1975. 'The State intends to introduce evidence that one (Ms. D) was abducted from the streets of Galveston, Texas at high noon on August 26, 1975 by the defendant, Clarence Ledet, and another male. Thereafter, they drove into the city of Houston, Texas against the will and desire of the victim, (Ms. D). From the city of Houston, Texas they drove accross (sic) the Louisiana state line into the area of Lake Charles and continuing to the city of Eunice, Louisiana. During this ride, the victim was forced to commit crimes against nature on the defendant, Clarence Ledet. The victim, (Ms. D), was able to escape her abductors in Eunice by jumping from the vehicle and running away and seeking the help of a passing motorist.
No hearing was held in the matter but the state urged, over defendant's objections, that the testimony be allowed so as to prove system and motive. Specifically, the state urged that the system involved was that defendant Ledet took young females previously unknown to him for trips in his car and threatened them with serious bodily harm and committed physical violence upon them. The details of the testimony to be presented by Ms. D and one George Arceneaux, a male companion of Ledet's, was not made known to the trial judge who ruled the evidence admissible. Defendant reserved a bill of exceptions. When the state at trial sought to introduce the extraneous offense testimony, defense counsel again strenuously objected, arguing, as before, that on the authority of State v. Moore, 278 So.2d 781 (La.1973) the evidence was not relevant to a material issue in the case, and that its only purpose was to inflame the jury by showing the defendant's despicable and criminal conduct on another occasion. The trial judge ruled the evidence admissible and permitted its introduction.
When the state filed its notice of intention to introduce evidence of extraneous offenses committed by Ledet, these two legal issues were raised:
1) Was proof of criminal activity with Ms. D relevant to the issue of the innocence or guilt of the accused as to the present charge of aggravated rape; and,
2) Even if relevant, did the prejudicial effect outweigh whatever probative value it may have had so as to require its exclusion as unfairly denying the accused a fair trial upon his guilt or innocence of the crime with which he stands charged.
Initially we note that these two complicated and delicate issues can rarely receive proper consideration by a trial judge without his knowing what the testimony will actually be. In order for this Court to determine whether this case was one of those special cases in which evidence of other crimes is admissible, we must recapitulate the facts surrounding these two separate and unrelated incidents.
On the evening of March 18, 1975, defendant Clarence Ledet went to a house in Eunice, Louisiana where Ms. C, the alleged victim of the crime, was living at the time and was introduced to her there. She left the house voluntarily with him and another female companion and they embarked on a journey that would last until the early hours of the morning, would traverse several Louisiana towns including Ville Platte, Crowley and Lafayette, and would include a visit by the two of them to a motel room in Lafayette. Throughout the evening Ledet cursed Ms. C, forced her to drink whiskey, struck her repeatedly, on one occasion striking her above the eye. Early in the evening Ms. C left Ledet's car in a barroom parking lot and asked Daniel Lee, a stranger to her, to help her get home to see her baby. Mr. Lee, a friend of Ledet's, joined the group and made no effect to help Ms. C get home. Ms. C testified that she never repeated her plea for help, that she never requested help from any of the many people (including bartenders, the motel owner, and even a group of policemen who helped them when their car was towed into Ville Platte after being struck beside the road) but that she failed to ask for help was because she was afraid of Ledet. She claimed she had seen what she believed to be a knife in his possession. She insisted that her seeming calm during must of this time, her seeming willingness at times to accept Ledet's advances, and her submission to a single act of sexual intercourse in the motel were predicated on her fear of Ledet. It was on her testimony alone that the state could establish that an aggravated rape occurred, because only Ledet and Ms. C were present in the motel room 1 where the charged crime allegedly occurred.
In order to bolster the state's contention that Ms. C was raped by Ledet, the state introduced evidence of an unrelated offense which took place in Louisiana and Texas some five months after the Ms. C incident. As to the later incident, Ms. D testified that she was abducted off the streets of Galveston, Texas, by Ledet and a male companion, who tied her up with towels and gagged her and then held her in the car as it was driven first to Houston and then back to Louisiana. She testified that she was repeatedly beaten, was forced to commit crime against nature on Ledet, and made to submit to an act of attempted sodomy. At about seven o'clock that night, she testified that defendant parked the car on a deserted side road off the highway and told her she could get out if she wanted to. When she did get out to run, defendant chased her, caught her, beat and kicked her, and dragged her back to the car. Inside the car, defendant struck at her head with a knife, exclaiming that he ought to kill her, and cut the hand she raised in protection of her face. She also claimed that Ledet stole twelve dollars from her. Although she reported the incident to police, no charges were prosecuted.
In order for a person to be found guilty of a crime, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused committed the crime with which he stands charged, not that he May have committed it because he is a bad man who has committed other offenses on other occasions. State v. Frederick, 340 So.2d 1353 (La.1976); State v. Slayton, 338 So.2d 694 (La.1976); State v. Gaines, 340 So.2d 1294 (La.1976). Only under certain limited circumstances may the state introduce evidence of other criminal acts committed by an accused. See R.S. 15:481, 491, 495. One of these special circumstances is referred to in R.S. 15:445 and 446 which provide as follows:
'In order to show intent, evidence is admissible of similar acts, independent of the act charged as a crime in the indictment, for though intent is a question of fact, it need not be proven as a fact, it may be inferred from the circumstances of the transaction.'
'When knowledge or intent forms an essential part of the inquiry, testimony may be offered of such acts, conduct or declarations of the accused as tend to establish such knowledge or intent and where the offense is one of a system, evidence is admissible to prove the continuity of the offense, and the commission of similar offenses for the purpose of showing guilty knowledge and intent, but not to prove the offense charged.'
As we stated in State v. Gaines, supra, at 1296,
'These statutes and the jurisprudence construing them rest on the proposition that if the sole relevance of other acts is to prove the defendant's criminal disposition, then the evidence is inadmissible character evidence. Although it can be effectively argued that evidence of other offenses is inadmissible because it is irrelevant to any issue in the trial for the crime charged, it can also be argued that this character evidence is relevant to guilt generally, because, having committed this kind of crime before, the defendant is at least capable of the criminal activity charged. Under either analysis, however, the evidence has been uniformly excluded due to the fact that the evidence presents an inordinate risk of prejudice. The prejudice results from various factors, among which are: (1) the strong possibility that the jury...
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