Tuesday, September 28, 2021

People v. Wise (Cal. Ct. App. - Sept. 28, 2021)

Dating is not easy.  Especially if you're a woman.  Among other things, you might run into someone like Gregory Wise.

It's pretty chilling, even though (thankfully!) the victim wasn't ever physically assaulted.  It started innocently enough, like a million (or more) online dates:  "Defendant met R.F. through a dating website in 2011. After a couple of casual dates involving walking around public parks, she relayed to defendant she was not interested in pursuing the relationship."

Fine.  Didn't work out.  Time to move on.

But Mr. Wise had other plans.

"Defendant still continued to text and call her over 900 times for the following three years, even though R.F. only responded to tell him to stop and attempted to pretend she had changed her number. In 2015, defendant resorted to threatening to kill himself if she did not reciprocate his feelings towards her. Defendant had also changed his profile on the dating website to say, “[R.F.] you are the only one for me,” call R.F. his “soulmate,” and that: “She just confuzzled [sic] and continues to play games with me as she had from the very beginning. . . . I been ‘stalkering’ her lately. Whatever that word means that concept means. She so fraidy [sic] of me she won’t even dare respond so I guesses [sic] I will have to confront her.” Around discovering defendant’s profile changes, R.F. also found a video defendant uploaded showing him shooting guns while running through a forest in a military fashion."

Not good.  You could easily see why the victim might be freaked out.

But it gets worse.

"On June 22, 2015, defendant was arrested after a light rail rider called 911 reporting defendant had a gun in his pocket on the train. Officers found on defendant a map to R.F.’s house and a document titled “Plan Trackering [sic]” that discussed placing a tracking device on a vehicle. Defendant also had a document with R.F.’s license plate number and a description of her vehicle."

This makes it an easy stalking case, right?  There's basically a zero percent chance the jury's going to acquit.  So just introduce the basic evidence, rest, and declare victory.

But what makes the case even weirder (to me) is that the prosecutor goes ahead and introduces other (freaky) evidence as well:

"Before trial, the prosecutor sought admission of the photographs recovered from defendant’s devices. The first set of pictures were nearly 300 screenshots of a computer desktop with various images of R.F. next to other images including those of legs and feet of other women and monster-like cartoons eating women. These screenshots were consistent with vorarephilia, or vore pornography, which is characterized by a neurotic desire to consume or be consumed by another person or creature. Defendant also labeled the screenshots with the description of what he was doing, often sexually, when he took the screenshot, such as “1-1-13 0915 knees right sex stared into her eyes snow white.bmp” and “6-6-12 2404 focusing on her face of her in the costume on kn.bmp.” 

The prosecutor described these photos as getting “to the meat and potatoes of the defendant’s intent and obsession with the victim.” Defense counsel argued the photos were private and not used in any way to harass or annoy. The trial court found these pictures admissible without explaining its reasoning.

The second set were photographs surreptitiously taken of 14 other women totaling over 350 pictures. Most of these pictures were taken in parking lots while the women were getting in or out of their cars, or while they walked down the sidewalk, and many focused on their legs. The prosecutor argued these were admissible under Evidence Code sections 1101, subdivision (b) and 1109. The trial court permitted these photos because they were “relevant to his intent in the stalking charge.”

To me, that just seems wrong.  Maybe they're marginally relevant; and, to be clear, I'm saying "maybe" just to be safe.  But their prejudice clearly outweighs whatever their probative value might be.  The goal is to label Mr. Wise as a freak for loving monsters eating women.  Which, sure, yeah, he definitely is, but that doesn't really go to the whole "crime" part of what we're trying to get at here.

Nonetheless, the Court of Appeal affirms.  Personally, I'd have probably been fine if it had just said "at worst, harmless error, since the evidence was pretty darn clear on the whole stalking thing."  But, nope, the justices conclude that the various photographs were relevant, admissible, and non-prejudicial (or at least that their probative value outweighed any prejudice).  Seems way too aggressive to me, but what do I know?

Anyway, the point is this:  Online dating isn't always perfect.  Or even close.