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907 S.W.2d 212

State v. Gateley

Missouri Court of Appeals

Decided September 12, 1995

Missouri Court of Appeals · decided 1995-09-12

Relies on State v. Hendrix · LaGue v. Farmers & Merchants Insurance Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1995-09-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently June 2010

6 state decisions

30199520002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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PREWITT, Judge,

¶1concurring.

¶2I concur in the result. I am of the opinion that the evidence recited in the majority opinion was sufficient for the giving of MAI-CR3d 310.50, regarding voluntary intoxication. One or more members of the jury may have felt that the reprehensible behavior charged would not have occurred except for Appellant’s intoxication.

¶3The points raised as to character in both appeals fortify my opinion that character evidence is “usually insignificant, and often misleading, in the trier of facts’ consideration of the main issues. I believe such evidence tends to confuse more than it helps.” State v. Hendrix, 699 S.W.2d 779, 781 n. 2 (Mo.App.1985). See also LaGue v. Farmers & Merchants Ins. Co., 779 S.W.2d 14, 16 (Mo.App.1989) (“the interspersing of the collateral issue of character into civil controversies carries dangerous baggage such as distraction from the main issue, and probable prejudice.”). Such evidence, however, has been long allowed, primarily in criminal matters, in Missouri and elsewhere. See 22 William A. SCHROEDER, MISSOURI PRACTICE, MISSOURI Evidence § 404.1, pp. 254-258 (1992); 29 Am.Jur.2d Evidence, § 367, p. 406 (1994).

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