Page:Alford v. State.pdf/4

Rh to rape her, although he at last yielded to her entreaties and desisted without having accomplished his purpose. The court instructed the jury, in substance, that Alford could not be convicted upon Mrs. Austin's testimony, that evidence having been admitted only to show design, particular intention, knowledge, or good or bad faith. The appellant insists that the admission of this testimony was prejudicial error. The State contends that proof of a recent offense of a similar nature is competent.

This question of introducing proof of other offenses in criminal cases has been considered by us on more than a hundred occasions. In reviewing these opinions one notices that the results reached in the various cases have been harmonious to a high degree. There have occasionally been dicta that went beyond the requirements of the case under consideration, and with so many decisions to choose from it is, of course, possible to pluck sentences from their factual background and in that way to advance a plausible argument supporting either the reception or the exclusion of evidence concerning almost any prior offense. But when each statement of law is weighed in its own setting of fact the opinions may be readily reconciled with one another.

No one doubts the fundamental rule of exclusion, which forbids the prosecution from proving the commission of one crime by proof of the commission of another. The State is not permitted to adduce evidence of other offenses for the purpose of persuading the jury that the accused is a criminal and is therefore likely to be guilty of the charge under investigation. In short, proof of other crimes is never admitted when its only relevancy is to show that the prisoner is a man of bad character, addicted to crime.

The rule itself has been announced in some fifty decisions of this court and is so familiar that we need not discuss at length the reasons for its acceptance by every English and American court. Basically, the rule rests upon that spirit of fair play which, perhaps more than anything else, distinguishes Anglo-American law