California Court Reverses Murder Conviction of Man Based on Improper Admission of Character Evidence That He Also Attacked a Defenseless Man in a Wheelchair

Propensity character evidence is evidence of a person’s character to prove their propensity to act in a certain way, i.e., “once a burglar, always a burglar.” Such evidence is generally inadmissible for a few reasons, including (1) fear that jurors will think the person can’t change; (2) fear that the jurors will conclude that the person should be punished for their bad character, regardless of whether they’re guilty of the crime charged; and (3) protecting defendants from having to defend themselves against crimes not charged in the indictment. I’ve seen many cases involving prejudicial propensity character evidence being improperly admitted, but all of them are topped by the Jake Combs case.

Recently, the Court of Appeal, First District, California, reversed Combs’s convictions in People v. Combs, 2025 WL 1324175 (Cal. App. 1st 2025). In Combs,

In January of 2022, after a long day and night of drinking, defendant Jake Combs shot and killed Trevor Earley after Earley allegedly threatened to kill his dog. Combs was convicted by a jury of first degree murder and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison, including a 25-year-to-life firearm enhancement.

At trial, the prosecution introduced video evidence that, while in jail, Combs “walked up to another inmate who was sitting in a wheelchair and punched him in the face repeatedly without any provocation.” The prosecution then insinuated that the attack was racially motivated, without any evidence to substantiate that claim.*

In reversing Combs’s conviction, the court concluded that

we struggle to imagine any evidence more inflammatory and prejudicial than video of Combs attacking a defenseless man in a wheelchair, refusing to stop when ordered to do so until a taser was deployed, and testimony regarding the same, together with the prosecution’s unsubstantiated allegation that the attack was racially motivated. The prosecutor evidently agreed, making the jail attack the coda to her closing argument, and directly linking the jail attack to the charged murder by telling the jury that “Mr. Combs is a violent person and we now have two instances for you to consider where he has attacked people unprovoked. You saw that in the jail attack video. What Mr. Combs did to Mr. Earley was murder and it was murder in the first degree.” 

-CM

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*Combs alleged that the man he punched had raped someone, precipitating his attack.