A man convicted of beating his wife will receive a new trial after the state’s second-highest court determined a Denver judge mistakenly allowed jurors to hear about two previous instances of the defendant beating his wife.

Under Colorado’s procedural rules, prosecutors cannot use evidence of a defendant’s other, uncharged misconduct to show that the person has bad character and acted in line with that bad character in committing the criminal charges at hand. Such “propensity” evidence runs the risk of a conviction based unfairly on the uncharged acts.

There is an exception if the evidence of prior misconduct can show the defendant’s motive, plan or intent to commit the charged offense. Colorado law also broadly permits such evidence for sexual offenses in order to show the defendant’s modus operandi, or way of doing things.

However, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals saw no apparent link between Kiefer Beyer’s two prior assaults on his wife and the assault for which he stood trial in 2020. Although the prosecution argued the three episodes were similar enough to illustrate Beyer’s intent, the panel was unconvinced.

“Instead, the prior acts evidence simply invited the jury to infer that because Beyer had previously choked his wife, he likely assaulted her on New Year’s Day, including kicking her down the stairs, smashing her head into a doorframe, and biting her nose,” wrote Judge Elizabeth L. Harris in the March 23 opinion.

On New Year’s Eve 2018, the Beyers had been out drinking and using illicit drugs. Once they came home, Beyer allegedly grew enraged at his wife and physically attacked her.

Beyer’s wife then drove off to meet police. She subsequently went to the hospital for a forensic examination. Prosecutors charged Beyer with nine offenses, ranging from assault and attempted sexual assault to false imprisonment.

A jury convicted Beyer on most of the assault counts, while acquitting him of attempted sex assault. He received five years in prison.

On appeal, Beyer challenged District Court Judge J. Eric Elliff’s decision to allow jurors to hear about his other alleged assaults that had not been criminally charged. The prosecution offered four prior incidents in total, but Elliff permitted two as evidence: One encounter involving an assault and the other involving an attempted rape.

“Here, if the defendant successfully used violence in the past in order to intimidate, control, and harm the victim during domestic violence disputes, then the evidence makes it more probable that he knowingly utilized violence to intimidate, control, and intentionally harm the victim because that is what worked in the past,” the prosecution argued.

Beyer’s attorney claimed his pattern of angry behavior was “hardly unique,” and the evidence did not show a common modus operandi across all incidents.

“In addition, it is unfair to require the defendant to disprove the uncharged misconduct or explain his personality,” wrote Deputy State Public Defender Jud Lohnes.

The Court of Appeals panel agreed with Beyer. Because neither of the prior incidents involved Beyer successfully sexually assaulting his wife, they could not show a common intent to sexually assault her on New Year’s Day. Further, the panel saw no evidence that his prior strangulations of his wife resulted in serious bodily injury, or any injury. 

“The mere act of putting one’s hands on another person’s neck is not the kind of unique or distinctive conduct that makes a witness’s account of the charged crime more believable,” Harris wrote. Instead, “the evidence’s relevance mostly relied on the inference that Beyer had assaulted his wife in the past and so likely assaulted her this time.”

She added that because the physical evidence of the New Year’s Day assault was not conclusive, and the credibility of Beyer’s wife was the main factor, it was possible Beyer’s other misconduct contributed to the jury’s verdict. The panel ordered a new trial.

The case is People v. Beyer.