TYLER, D.J.
[¶ 1] Appellant, Lawrence Floyd Silva, seeks to overturn his felony convictions for Aggravated Burglary, in violation of Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-3-301(a) and (c)(ii) (LexisNexis 2011), and Attempt to Commit Kidnapping, in violation of Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-1-301(a)(i) and Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-201(a)(iii) (Lexis-Nexis 2011). Appellant contends that the district court erred by preventing him from introducing certain evidence of the victim's prior conduct in his defense to the Attempt to Commit Kidnapping charge. Appellant also claims that the district court wrongfully refused his request to instruct on a lesser-included misdemeanor offense of Attempted False Imprisonment, under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-1-301(a)(i) and Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-203(a) (LexisNexis 2011), to the felony charge of Attempt to Commit Kidnapping. We find no error and will affirm the convictions.
[¶ 2] Appellant presents his issues as follows:
The State characterizes the issues as follows:
[¶ 3] In the early morning hours of June 19, 2010, Appellant embarked upon his single-minded mission to remove his estranged fiancée from the Rock Springs apartment where she was staying with friends, and to "drag" her to his home so that they could "settle" the discord in their relationship. As he walked the several miles across the city toward the apartment, Appellant outlined his plan and his progress in a torrent of scurrilous voice and text messages sent to his intended's cellular telephone.
[¶ 4] Upon his arrival at the apartment, Appellant began to pound loudly on the front door, awakening his former girlfriend from her sleep on a recliner in the living room. She approached a window near the door and implored Appellant to leave immediately—otherwise, she would call the police. Ignoring her plea to leave, Appellant commenced yelling his insistence that she "come home" with him.
[¶ 5] Alarmed at Appellant's unrelenting exhortations, his erstwhile companion snatched a nearby telephone and dialed 911 to summon help. Appellant then broke through the window screen and came "flying through the window" into the apartment in pursuit of his objective. The victim dropped
[¶ 6] Amid the ordeal, through the open window earlier breached by Appellant, the shouting voice of a neighbor offered his assistance to the victim and urged Appellant to immediately let loose of the victim and leave the apartment. The victim responded by pleading for the neighbor's assistance. Contemporaneously, Appellant remonstrated the neighbor's intervention by yelling that he should "mind his own business" and that Appellant was "just trying to get his wife home," all-the-while plodding toward the living room at the front of the apartment, pulling the victim by her hair. The locked front door frustrated the neighbor's immediate attempted rescue of the victim.
[¶ 7] When Appellant reached the living room with his victim in tow, he released her and unlocked the front door to accost the interloping neighbor. As Appellant exited through the door, the victim quickly shut and locked it behind him, and retreated into the apartment. The victim listened as Appellant confronted and grabbed the neighbor. The neighbor repelled Appellant's attack and retaliated by punching and head-butting Appellant into dazed submission. Battered and disoriented, Appellant staggered away from the apartment complex only later to be apprehended by police where he was formally arrested, taken to the hospital for treatment, and jailed.
[¶ 8] As to the district court's preclusion of certain evidence regarding the victim's past conduct, discovery and pretrial motion proceedings unveiled Appellant's strategy to defeat the charges against him by showing at trial that he lacked any specific intent to remove the victim so that he could "inflict bodily injury on or to terrorize" her. Appellant planned to demonstrate that his true intent at the time of the incident was actually to protect the victim from vulnerabilities to her safety caused by her habitual alcohol consumption by merely taking her to his home. To articulate to the jury his real intent at the time, Appellant proposed to present detailed evidence of the victim's past conduct, particularly related to her frequent use of alcohol, including the following: the victim was an alcoholic; the victim often drank until she passed-out; she had once been assaulted after falling into unconsciousness from alcohol consumption; she had previously been photographed in the nude while asleep under the effects of alcohol; she had a tendency to become promiscuous with strangers when she was under the influence of intoxicants; she had previously been an exotic dancer; she had been arrested for incidents associated with her intoxication; and, she had been convicted of some misdemeanor alcohol-related offenses. Most of the information concerning the victim's supposed sexual conduct before, and during, the tenure of the couple's romantic relationship was learned from investigations conducted after Appellant committed the acts resulting in the charges being levied against him. Despite the fact that he was admittedly ignorant of the victim's putative extraneous sexual behavior prior to the date that the events transpired, Appellant nevertheless wanted to provide such evidence to the jury.
[¶ 9] The State filed a motion in limine aimed at preempting Appellant's reliance on many of these anticipated proofs. Appellant's trial attorney responded, mainly citing W.R.E. 404(a) as justifying introduction and admissibility of this key evidence. The State's trial counsel objected to admission of this evidence relying upon W.R.E. 405, 608, and 609, and based upon an analogy to Wyoming's rape shield statute, Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-312 (LexisNexis 2011) (applicable only in sexual assault cases). The district court held a series of pretrial hearings on the pending motion.
[¶ 10] After completing the hearings and listening to the arguments of counsel, the district court ruled that evidence of the victim's drinking habits and alcohol-related arrests
[¶ 11] At trial, the district court gave Appellant's trial counsel considerable latitude in examining the victim and other witnesses concerning the prior conduct of the victim at various times when she was intoxicated. This included a ruling after a bench conference that Appellant's counsel could solicit testimony and evidence pertaining to some photographs which were taken of the nude victim at a time that she was passed-out from the effects of alcohol consumption. Moreover, Appellant testified at length regarding his relationship with the victim and issues related to her drinking. Although the district court remained steadfast in its pretrial prohibition of evidence of the victim's sexual conduct while intoxicated or evidence that she was sexually assaulted while passed-out by sustaining the State's objections at trial, Appellant never asked to make an offer of proof outside the hearing of the jury to preserve for the record any proposed evidence concerning the victim's sexual past in accordance with W.R.E. 103.
[¶ 12] The second issue on appeal spurs examination of the district court's refusal of Appellant's proffered lesser-included offense instruction. Appellant requested proposed jury instructions setting forth his contention that the jury should consider, in the alternative, Attempted False Imprisonment and False Imprisonment as lesser-included misdemeanor offenses to Attempt to Commit Kidnapping and Kidnapping, respectively. At the jury instruction conference, Appellant's trial counsel objected to the district court's refusal to give the lesser-included offense instructions. The attorney for the State argued, and the district court agreed, that Attempted False Imprisonment is not a lesser-included offense to Attempt to Commit Kidnapping where, as was specifically charged in the instant case, Appellant's purported criminal conduct involved an attempted removal—not confinement—of the victim.
[¶ 13] Ultimately, the jury found Appellant guilty of Aggravated Burglary and Attempt to Commit Kidnapping. The district court sentenced Appellant to imprisonment for twelve to fifteen years on each count to be served concurrent, but consecutive to an imprisonment sentence in an unrelated case.
[¶ 14] The standard guiding our review of a district court's evidentiary rulings in a criminal case is well-known:
Edwards v. State, 2007 WY 146, ¶ 7, 167 P.3d 636, 637 (Wyo.2007) (citations omitted); see Vigil v. State, 2010 WY 15, ¶ 11, 224 P.3d 31, 36 (Wyo.2010). Even if an evidentiary determination error is found to have occurred, Appellant carries the burden of affirmatively showing that such error was prejudicial:
Bloomfield v. State, 2010 WY 97, ¶ 17, 234 P.3d 366, 373 (Wyo.2010).
[¶ 15] Appellant insists that the district court should have allowed him to present certain evidence of the victim's past sexual conduct at times that she was intoxicated to fully explain to the jury his motivation and specific intent at the time of the events giving rise to the charges. He believes that, armed with evidence of the victim's past alcohol-fueled risky sexual behaviors, the jury could have understood and agreed that his true intent was to protect her—not to harm her. Appellant maintains that conveying his actual intent to the jury was vital to his defense to the specific intent crimes charged, and that the district court committed error by refusing such testimony.
[¶ 16] In pretrial hearings regarding the State's motion in limine, the district judge spontaneously expressed his views upon the various arguments being advanced by the opposing attorneys. Comments interspersed in the record during these hearings relate to the court's reaction to: the State's counsel's analogy to Wyoming's rape shield statute, preventing introduction of the victim's sexual history in a sexual assault case; Appellant's trial counsel's arguments relying upon W.R.E. 404(a) as supporting introduction of the victim's sexual past events; the claims that W.R.E. 405 addresses character evidence based upon past instances of conduct in very specific circumstances; the State's assertions that W.R.E. 608 prohibits use of evidence of the victim's character, except as to her reputation for truthfulness or untruthfulness; and, arguments whether W.R.E. 609 would permit introduction of the victim's misdemeanor convictions for alcohol-related offenses. Appellant contends that these remarks made during arguments were the trial judge's stated grounds for the evidentiary rulings for which he assigns error. The record belies Appellant's contention.
[¶ 17] Throughout the pretrial proceedings, the trial judge patiently reiterated that evidence of the victim's sexual conduct while intoxicated or evidence that she was sexually assaulted while passed-out was simply "not relevant" to the issues in the case.
[¶ 18] Appellant's objective of placing the victim's self-endangering proclivities before the jury to vitiate any proof of his specific intent to harm her went almost unimpeded by the district court's exclusion of certain irrelevant evidence. The victim admitted that she had hurt herself when intoxicated; she had experienced acute and chronic health problems while under the influence of alcohol; she had been arrested for driving under the influence; and, she was an habitual drinker. She acknowledged that she had informed Appellant of these facts, or knew that he was in a position to have personally observed them. The victim's mother outlined the victim's addiction to drinking, that the victim had been arrested for driving while intoxicated, and that the victim had once been left stranded in the desert after a bout of drinking. The victim's former roommate testified that the victim's incessant drinking precipitated the termination of their living arrangement. A former neighbor described how he had observed the victim being taken away by ambulance after she consumed straight vodka from the bottle. The victim's prior boyfriend testified that he decided to end their relationship due to her habitual drinking. Appellant testified at trial. He explained that the victim had crashed his car when she was intoxicated; the victim had to be removed from bars due to her drinking to the point of unconsciousness; the victim is often inebriated to the point that she has no orientation of time or place; the victim suffers health problems stemming from her use of alcohol; and, once, while passed-out, a stranger photographed her nude body. Appellant concluded that he was aware of the victim's past risky behaviors inevitably attributed to her alcohol consumption, and that his intent at the time of the events giving rise to his criminal charges was merely to protect the victim.
[¶ 19] Throughout the entire trial, there was only one occasion where Appellant's trial counsel crossed into forbidden areas of evidence production, yet no offer of proof was made.
[¶ 20] In order to protect the record and to satisfy the requirements of W.R.E. 103, Appellant needed to make a timely showing that "a substantial right [of Appellant was] affected" and "the substance of the evidence was made known to the court by offer or was apparent from the context within which questions were asked." W.R.E. 103(a)(2). Quite simply, Appellant should have made an offer of proof if he intended to attack the district court's evidentiary rulings:
Bloomfield, ¶ 23, 234 P.3d at 375 (quoting Rudolph v. State, 829 P.2d 269, 275 (Wyo. 1992)). Further,
Bloomfield, ¶ 20, 234 P.3d at 374.
[¶ 21] Appellant's decision not to give an offer of proof stripped the district court's ability to reconsider its exclusion of evidence at an appropriate time during trial, and it now inhibits meaningful appellate review of the district court's action. Id., ¶ 23, 234 P.3d at 375-76 (quoting Hermreck v. State, 956 P.2d 335, 338 (Wyo.1998)) ("The lack of an offer of proof impacts the district court's ruling and severely impedes appellate review."). Indeed, Appellant's omission to make an offer of proof must result in a waiver of his ability to attribute error to the district court. Padilla v. State, 601 P.2d 189, 194 (Wyo.1979) (citing Meredith v. Hardy, 554 F.2d 764 (5th Cir.1977) and Yost v. A.O. Smith Corp., 562 F.2d 592 (8th Cir.1977)).
[¶ 22] Appellant has not satisfied his burden of showing that the district court abused its discretion in making evidentiary rulings excluding irrelevant evidence of the victim's past conduct. Edwards, ¶ 7, 167 P.3d at 637. It was reasonable for the district court to conclude as it did, and we, therefore, find no error.
[¶ 23] The determination of whether one crime is a lesser-included offense of another generally implicates a question of law, subjecting the issue to appellate review de novo:
State v. Keffer, 860 P.2d 1118, 1137 (Wyo. 1993); see Dean v. State, 2003 WY 128, ¶¶ 11-12, 77 P.3d 692, 696 (Wyo.2003); Houghton v. State, 6 P.3d 643, 646 (Wyo. 2000); Paramo v. State, 896 P.2d 1342, 1344 (Wyo.1995); Sindelar v. State, 932 P.2d 730, 732 (Wyo.1997).
[¶ 24] We have adopted the statutory elements test as an uncomplicated means for ascertaining whether the jury
Keffer, 860 P.2d at 1133-34; see Dean, ¶¶ 14-19, 77 P.3d at 697-99. Moreover,
Id., ¶ 19, 77 P.3d at 699.
[¶ 25] At trial, Appellant faced a felony charge of Attempt to Commit Kidnapping by removal. The pertinent statutory elements of kidnapping by removal under which Appellant was prosecuted are:
Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-201(a)(iii) and (b)(i) (LexisNexis 2011).
[¶ 26] The court below ultimately gave "Instruction No. 30" at the conclusion of the evidentiary portion of the trial:
[¶ 27] Appellant asked the district court to instruct on Attempted False Imprisonment and False Imprisonment, in the alternative, as lesser-included misdemeanor offenses to Attempt to Commit Kidnapping and Kidnapping, respectively.
[¶ 28] Although Rule 31(c) of the Wyoming Rules of Criminal Procedure authorizes the jury's conviction of an accused for a lesser offense, during the instruction conference, the district court declined Appellant's request to instruct the jury on Attempted False Imprisonment as a lesser offense to the Attempt to Commit Kidnapping crime:
[¶ 29] Applying the statutory elements test, the district court unequivocally declared that Attempted False Imprisonment is not a lesser-included offense to Attempt to Commit Kidnapping where, as was so specifically charged in the case, Appellant's purported criminal conduct involved only an attempted removal of the victim with the intent to inflict bodily injury on or to terrorize her. Thus, "[w]here the lesser offense requires an element not required for the greater offense, no instruction is to be given under Wyoming Rule 31(c)." Keffer, 860 P.2d at 1134 (citing Schmuck II, 489 U.S. at 716, 109 S.Ct. at 1450, 103 L.Ed.2d 734). As a matter of law, the district court correctly applied the statutory elements test in properly refusing to give the proposed lesser offense instruction.
[¶ 30] The district court properly excluded irrelevant evidence of the victim's past conduct. Further, the district court did not err in refusing to instruct the jury on a proffered lesser-included offense instruction which required elements not required for the higher felony offense.
[¶ 31] Appellant's Judgment and Sentence is affirmed.
Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 182, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932).
Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-203(a) (LexisNexis 2011).