State v. Richins

• Decision Date: 19 August 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20200228,20200228
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Respondent, v. Ronald Jay RICHINS, Petitioner.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

496 P.3d 158

STATE of Utah, Respondent,

v.Ronald Jay RICHINS, Petitioner.

No. 20200228

Supreme Court of Utah.

Heard April 14, 2021

Filed August 19, 2021

Sean D. Reyes, Att'y Gen., Nathan H. Jack, Asst. Solic. Gen., Thaddeus May, Salt Lake City, for respondent

Sarah J. Carlquist, Salt Lake City, for petitioner

Justice Pearce authored the opinion of the Court in which Chief Justice Durrant, Associate Chief Justice Lee, Justice Himonas, and Justice Petersen joined.

On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals

Justice Pearce, opinion of the Court:

INTRODUCTION

¶1 A teenager being driven to school reported seeing Ronald Jay Richins standing in his yard and moving his hands in front of his pants in a way that suggested he was masturbating. The State charged Richins with lewdness.

¶2 The State sought to introduce evidence of four prior occasions when Richins had been accused of exposing and/or stimulating himself in public. Over Richins's objection, the district court admitted the evidence. The district court reasoned that the doctrine of chances permitted the State to introduce evidence of Richins's prior acts to establish the unlikelihood that his teenaged neighbor was mistaken about what she had seen. The jury convicted Richins.

¶3 Richins sought review in the court of appeals. That court affirmed Richins's conviction but expressed concerns about the way this court has articulated and applied the doctrine of chances. We agree with a majority of the court of appeals that the doctrine of chances presents a set of challenges for the courts tasked with applying it. This causes us to conclude that if the doctrine of chances is to remain part of our jurisprudence, it needs to be more carefully explained and more precisely employed. But we disagree with the court of appeals that the doctrine was correctly applied to admit the evidence in this case. We reverse the court of appeals, vacate Richins's conviction, and remand for a new trial.

BACKGROUND

¶4 Richins's next-door-neighbor (Neighbor) was driving her fifteen-year-old daughter (Daughter) to school. Daughter saw Richins standing in his yard. When a detective interviewed Richins three months later, he said that he was out for a smoke. Neighbor and Daughter told the detective a different story.¹

¶5 Daughter said she saw Richins with "his hands down near his genital area." She "could tell that there was flesh there ... and he was obviously holding something." She said she saw a "back and forward motion" and "[i]t kind of looked like he might have been masturbating."

¶6 But Daughter also said that she "didn't exactly see what [Richins] had in his hands." She conceded that "it's possible that I saw his hands in his pocket." Daughter also said she wasn't one hundred percent sure what Richins was doing.

¶7 As they drove past, Daughter had told Neighbor not to look at Richins. Neighbor looked. Neighbor said that Richins "appeared to be standing with his hands just kind of clasped down in front of him." There was nothing else Neighbor could observe from her vantage point. She acknowledged that Richins "may have just had his hands clasped in front of him. That's all I saw."

¶8 Daughter may have had reasons to perceive that Richins was engaged in something untoward. Daughter thought Richins was "creepy" and said that he made her feel "uncomfortable." Neighbor also told police that Richins was a "creepy guy." Neighbor, who knew that Richins was a registered sex offender, had told Daughter to "watch out" for Richins. Neighbor told Daughter "not to go near [Richins] or his house because all our neighbors warned us about him." Neighbor had given Daughter a "parental warning" consisting of: "Don't go into his yard. Don't talk to him. Just stay away from" Richins.

¶9 When a detective spoke with Richins about Daughter's report, the detective told Richins that two people were "certain" he had exposed himself. Richins maintained his innocence.

¶10 The State charged Richins with lewdness by a sex offender. Before trial, Richins's counsel sought to have the State disclose any evidence it would seek to admit under rule 404(b) of the Utah Rules of Evidence.² The State responded that it intended to introduce four separate incidents where Richins had exposed himself to women or was alleged to have done so (the other-acts evidence).

¶11 In the first incident, a woman noticed Richins looking at her as she entered a shopping center. When she exited, she saw that Richins had moved his car near hers. As she returned to her car, she saw Richins's discernibly turgid member. She also saw that he was masturbating. Richins denied the allegations but was cited for lewdness. The ultimate resolution of the case is unclear from the record.

¶12 In the second incident, two women in a park reported seeing Richins expose his penis, make eye contact, and begin to masturbate. Richins admitted to masturbating in front of the women and was arrested. The final resolution of the case is unclear from the record.

¶13 In the third incident, Richins was seen masturbating while driving next to a bus of junior high school girls. Richins mouthed "I love you" to some of them. Richins pled guilty to two counts of lewdness.

¶14 In the fourth incident, a woman waiting at a bus stop saw Richins pull down his pants, expose his penis, and begin to touch himself. A jury convicted Richins of lewdness.

¶15 The State argued that the other-acts evidence was admissible for two different reasons. The State argued it could be admitted to rebut the assertion that Daughter was "mistaken in what she witnessed." The State also argued the evidence should be admitted under the doctrine of chances.³

¶16 Richins countered that no proper noncharacter purpose justified the admission of the other-acts evidence. Richins contended that telling the jury about the four occasions on which he had been accused of public indecency would invite the jury to indulge the "improper inference" that evidence rule 404(b) prohibits. That is, that the evidence would suggest to the jury that he had been pleasuring himself when Neighbor and Daughter drove by because he is the type of guy who pleasures himself publicly.

¶17 Richins also argued that the State had not identified a proper noncharacter purpose for the admission of the evidence. Richins emphasized that he had not raised a defense of mistake, accident, lack of opportunity, or incorrect identification. Therefore, Richins continued, it would be inappropriate to allow the State to introduce the evidence to rebut defenses he had no intention of raising.

¶18 Richins further contended that the evidence should not be admitted under the doctrine of chances. As Richins highlighted, the doctrine of chances sets forth "four foundational requirements" that must be satisfied before prior-acts evidence can be admitted. See State v. Lopez , 2018 UT 5, ¶ 54, 417 P.3d 116. These factors, taken from State v. Verde , 2012 UT 60, ¶ 47, 296 P.3d 673, abrogated on other grounds by State v. Thornton , 2017 UT 9, 391 P.3d 1016, are: "materiality, similarity, independence, and frequency." Id. Richins argued that the other-acts evidence was neither material, similar, nor frequent enough to be admitted under the doctrine.

¶19 Richins argued that the "offered evidence is not material because it does not address a defense raised by the Defendant." Richins claimed that there was "no contested issue of identity or opportunity, nor is there a contested claim of mistake or accident." Richins maintained that "the State is incorrect in asserting that a defense claim that the accuser is mistaken" qualifies as an exception to the rule against character evidence from evidence rule 404(b) because "404(b) refers to a claim of mistake or accident by the defendant; not by a witness or accuser."

¶20 Richins further argued "there are material and contextual differences between the various incidents sufficient that they fail to clear the bar for similarity" and frequency. Richins pointed to the factual dissimilarities between the charged conduct and his other acts. And he focused his argument on the time that had passed since the other acts had occurred. He contended that the other acts had taken place between three and a half and nine years before. According to Richins, the gap in time meant that the acts had not occurred with sufficient frequency to have doctrine-of-chances significance.

¶21 The district court rejected all of Richins's arguments and found the other-acts evidence admissible under rule 404(b). The district court concluded that the evidence was admissible for three different non-character purposes: absence of mistake, rebuttal of a claim of fabrication, and the doctrine of chances.

¶22 The court briefly addressed each of the Verde factors:

The court finds that the proposed 404(b) evidence is material inasmuch as it address[es] issues that are clearly in dispute, namely what [Daughter] saw. Secondly the court finds that the incidents are similar, inasmuch as they all involve the exact same conduct, that of the defendant exposing himself to women in public. Third the court notes all of the prior incidents involve[ ] women who have no[ ] connection to one another. Finally the court find[s] that the State has met the frequency requirement, inasmuch as four allegations in seven years is clearly more accusations that a "typical" person would endure.

¶23 Richins also argued that, even if the proffered other-acts evidence was admissible under rule 404(b), it ought to be excluded under rule 403.⁴ By Richins's account, the "jury's duty in this case is simply to determine whether Mr. Richins is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge of lewdness in this case only." Richins therefore posited that the "jury should not make such a determination by means of considering both proven and unsubstantiated allegations that were made at least three and nine years prior to the one at issue in this case."

¶24 The district court concluded that rule 403 did not bar the admission...