Supreme Court of Iowa Reverses Murder Conviction, Finds Evidence of Suicidal Tendencies is Not Character Evidence

Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.404(a) states that

Evidence of a person’s character or a trait of the person’s character is not admissible for the purpose of proving that the person acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion.

As the Supreme Court of Iowa stated in its opinion on Friday in State v. Buelow, 2020 WL 7270258 (Iowa 2020),

This court has said, “[r]oughly stated, character is what a man actually is, while reputation is what his neighbors say he is.”…On the other end of the spectrum, evidence used to prove a person’s traits for “honesty, integrity, and good citizenship” or “peacefulness and nonviolence” is considered character evidence.

But is “evidence of a person’s suicidal disposition…properly characterized as character evidence”? That was the question the court had to address in Buelow.

In Buelow, 

Samantha Link, a twenty-one year old, lived with her twenty-five-year-old significant other, Fontae Buelow, in a friend’s basement. On March 30, 2017, the couple began the evening at a hotel hot tub. They later went to a bar to drink with friends. The couple argued at the bar, but they ended up leaving together to go home. They continued to argue once home. No one else was present at the residence. Buelow says that Link grabbed a knife from a butcher’s block sitting on the kitchen counter and stabbed herself. Buelow called 911 and told the operator that Link had stabbed herself in the stomach. Buelow also told law enforcement that Link had stabbed herself one time in the stomach. Emergency responders pronounced Link dead at the scene. Link was determined to have three knife wounds. One of the stab wounds penetrated Link’s heart and another went through her lung. Both of these wounds were independently fatal. The third stab wound was also in her chest area. The State charged Buelow with first-degree murder. Buelow’s only defense is that Link committed suicide by stabbing herself.

To support this claim, Buelow sought to present evidence of “Link’s prior suicide attempts, diagnoses that may increase the risk for suicide, and statements of suicidal ideations.” The trial court, however, found, inter alia, that this was inadmissible character evidence, and Buelow was found guilty of second-degree murder.

The Court of Appeals of Iowa reversed this conviction, and the Supreme Court if Iowa agreed, finding that the evidence regarding Link’s suicidal disposition was not character evidence. The court began by acknowledging that

According to one commentator, evidence of a suicidal disposition should be analyzed under the character evidence rules. See 7 Laurie Kratky Doré, Iowa Practice Series: Evidence § 5.404:3(A) & n.5, at 245 (2019-2020 ed. 1999). The Iowa Practice Series for Evidence reads the exception in rule 5.404(a)(2)(A) to permit “[i]ntroduction of victim character testimony by an accused … in any criminal case but will generally be available only to establish self-defense, some defenses in sexual abuse cases, and a suicide defense in a murder prosecution.” Id. (footnote omitted) (noting that “the suicidal characteristics of the victim could be relevant”). However, no explanation is given for why a victim’s suicidal disposition should be analyzed under the character evidence rules.

The court then held, though, that

The State concedes that mental health illnesses do not fit within the traditional framework of character evidence and suggests that the question in this case “should not be whether a person’s mental health history is character evidence, but rather, whether the character evidence rules should apply to this mental health history.” The State argues that rule 5.404 should exclude evidence if its only use is to establish propensity to act in a certain way. Under the State’s theory, the character evidence rules apply to Link’s mental health history, because Buelow is offering the evidence to prove Link’s propensity for self-harm. This reads rule 5.404(b) too broadly. As the United States Supreme Court has said on the analogous Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), the rule only comes into play to “protect[ ] against the introduction of extrinsic act evidence when that evidence is offered solely to prove character.”…Evidence of a person’s prior behavior or act may be introduced “if there is a noncharacter theory of relevance and the evidence is material to a legitimate issue.”…Link’s prior suicidal behavior stems from mental health issues rather than from a character trait. Thus, evidence of Link’s suicidal disposition has a noncharacter theory of relevance and should not be barred by rule 5.404(b).

This seems consistent with the holdings in other cases. For example, in State v. Stanley, 37 P.3d 85, 92 (N.M. 2001), the Supreme Court of New Mexico held

that evidence of suicidal tendencies of a deceased should not be considered character evidence for purposes of Rule 11-404. Suicidal dispositions typically stem from mental illness, not from a person’s “bad character” or trait of character. See generally In re Joseph G., 34 Cal.3d 429, 194 Cal.Rptr. 163, 667 P.2d 1176, 1178 (1983) (In Bank) (recognizing that suicide in the United States has continued to be considered an expression of mental illness). The Supreme Court of South Dakota recently held that expert testimony concerning the risk factors for suicide, such as mental illness, depression, significant physical illness, chemical dependency, suicidal ideation or previous suicidal behavior, was relevant and admissible. State v. Guthrie, 627 N.W.2d 401, 410-11 (S.D.2001).

-CM