Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/234

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ESTELLE v. McGUIRE Opinion of O’Connor, J.

McGuire intended to kill his daughter, and the evidence that Tori was a battered child was probative of causation and intent. I therefore join Part I of the Court’s opinion. I do not join Part II of the opinion because I think there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury misapplied the prior acts instruction. The trial court instructed the jury that evidence of Tori’s prior injuries had been admitted to show that McGuire had committed offenses similar to that for which he was on trial, and that, if the jury found a “clear connection” between the prior offenses and the charged offense, “it may be logically concluded that if the Defendant committed other offenses, he also committed the crime charged in this case.” App. 41. In my view, the instruction encouraged the jury to assume that McGuire had inflicted the prior injuries and then directed the jury to conclude that the prior abuser was the murderer. Because the instruction may have relieved the State of its burden of proving the identity of Tori’s murderer beyond a reasonable doubt, I would hold that the instruction was error and remand to the Court of Appeals for a determination of whether that error was harmless. The fact that a 6-month-old child was repeatedly beaten in the course of her short life is so horrifying that a trial court should take special care to inform the jury as to the significance of that evidence. As the Court notes, the demonstration of battered child syndrome is relevant because it “ ‘indicates that a child found with [serious, repeated injuries] has not suffered those injuries by accidental means,’ ” ante, at 68 (quoting People v. Jackson, 18 Cal. App. 3d 504, 507; 95 Cal. Rptr. 919, 921 (1971)). I therefore agree that proof of Tori’s battered child status, although “not linked by any direct evidence to McGuire,” was properly admitted because “the evidence demonstrated that Tori’s death was the result of an intentional act by someone, and not an accident.” Ante, at 69. Precisely because the relevance of battered child syndrome is not tied to the identity of the abuser, however, I