People v. Smart

The Illinois Supreme Court considered the evidentiary question of whether the State may introduce evidence of other misconduct to prove intent in a case where the defendant denied the commission of a charged crime and did not present any evidence or argument that his acts were accidental, incidental, or merely inadvertent. In the underlying case, the State introduced evidence of prior uncharged acts of misconduct to prove intent even though defendant denied that he made contact with the victim and did not present any evidence to contest intent. The supreme court found that defendant’s decision not to contest intent, under the facts of this case, had no effect on the admissibility of evidence because the defendant was charged with a specific-intent crime and intent was at issue regardless of the evidence or argument presented by the defendant. However, the court further concluded that because the evidence presented depended on a propensity inference in order to be relevant, the trial court erred when it permitted the State to present evidence of defendant’s prior acts of misconduct because the evidence did not meet the statutory criteria for admissibility of propensity evidence but that this was a harmless evidentiary error. (THEIS, OVERSTREET, HOLDER WHITE, and ROCHFORD, concurring and O’BRIEN and CUNNINGHAM, dissenting)