Word Against Word
When I was assigned to the City of Miami Police Department's Internal Affairs Section, the unit responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by our own officers, we handled a series of complaints against a Miami police officer named Fernando Cabeza. Over a period of time, three different former girlfriends came forward and alleged that he had beaten them. Each woman told a similar story, and each time it came down to the same thing: his word against hers.
Those were different times. The domestic violence laws and mandatory arrest policies we have today did not yet exist, and without independent witnesses, injuries documented at the time, or an admission, the department had no way to sustain the allegations. No action was taken and the cases were classified as “inconclusive.” I remember the frustration of closing those cases knowing that the pattern was there, but that each complaint, standing alone, could not carry the weight of proof.
Years later, in September 1997, Cabeza, by then a former Miami police officer, beat his wife, a Miami-Dade firefighter, on two nights in a row. This time he was convicted. But the women who came before her never told their stories to the jury, and the reason why goes to the heart of a rule of evidence every detective should understand. In Florida, we call it the Williams Rule.
What the Williams Rule Is
The Williams Rule takes its name from Williams v. State, a 1959 Florida Supreme Court decision. Ralph Williams was charged with raping a 17-year-old girl after hiding in the back seat of her car in a St. Petersburg parking lot in December 1957. Six weeks earlier, another young woman had found him hiding in the back seat of her car in the same lot. The court allowed the jury to hear about that earlier incident and held that evidence relevant to a material fact in the case is admissible even if it reveals another crime, so long as its only relevance is not the defendant's bad character or propensity.
The rule is now classified in Section 90.404(2)(a) of the Florida Statutes, which permits "similar fact evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts" when it is relevant to prove motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident. It is inadmissible when it is offered solely to show that the defendant is a bad person who probably did it again. The prosecution must give written notice of its intent to use this evidence at least 10 days before trial. Florida has also added provisions, Sections 90.404(2)(b) and (c), that give prosecutors broader latitude in child molestation and sexual offense cases.
The federal counterpart is Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), commonly called "prior bad acts" evidence. The language is nearly identical: other acts cannot be used to prove a person's character in order to show he acted in conformity with it, but they may be admitted for another purpose, such as proving intent, plan, identity, or lack of accident. Under both systems, the judge must also weigh whether the value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice to the defendant.
What Happened in the Cabeza Case
When Cabeza's wife came forward, the prosecution faced the same problem we had faced in Internal Affairs. During the attack, he demanded that she quit her job, grabbed her by the hair, and kicked her leg, leaving a bruise. It was her word against his, and the women with the most to say about his history were not in the courtroom.
According to The Miami Herald, two of Cabeza's former girlfriends were afraid to testify before Judge Deborah White-Lebora. The Williams Rule could have opened the door for them, but it cannot compel a frightened witness to walk through it, and the jury never heard their accounts. Even without them, on April 30, 1999, Cabeza, then 40 years old, was found guilty of two counts of battery. Because it was a first-time misdemeanor, the most he faced was one year in the county jail. Prosecutor Ivonne Sanchez-Ledo asked that sentencing be postponed to May 27 so the two women could give the judge sworn written statements about the violence they had suffered at his hands. Evidence that could not be used to prove his guilt could still be used to decide his punishment.
The case shows both the reach and the limits of the rule. Prior acts are never automatically admissible, and a witness who is afraid to take the stand cannot help a jury no matter what the law allows. In domestic violence cases, that fear is often the greatest obstacle a prosecutor faces, and it is one more reason detectives must build relationships with these victims and connect them with advocates long before trial. Still, the conviction brought the Miami Police Department and our investigators a measure of closure. The violence those women described which our department could never substantiate, finally became part of the record the court weighed before sentencing him.
The Bill Cosby Trials
The most widely known example of this strategy in recent memory is the prosecution of Bill Cosby in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Cosby was charged with drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004. Pennsylvania follows its own version of Rule 404(b), and the case shows both the power and the risk of prior bad acts evidence.
At the first trial in 2017, the judge allowed only one other accuser to testify alongside Constand. The jury deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial. Before the retrial, the prosecution asked to call 19 prior accusers, and the court allowed five. Those five women described encounters with Cosby in the 1980s that followed the same pattern: an offer of a drink or pill, incapacitation, and sexual assault. In April 2018, the second jury convicted Cosby on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and he was sentenced to three to ten years in state prison. The Superior Court, Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate court, affirmed the conviction and found the testimony proper to show a common plan or scheme (NBC10 Philadelphia; New York State Bar Association).
On June 30, 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, and Cosby was released the same day. The majority's decision rested on a different issue: a former district attorney had publicly assured Cosby years earlier that he would not be prosecuted, and Cosby relied on that promise when he gave a deposition in Constand's civil lawsuit. Because that ruling decided the case, the court did not resolve the prior bad acts question, although at least one justice wrote that he was deeply troubled by the volume of prior acts testimony admitted. The lesson is clear. The jump from one prior accuser to five may well have been what turned a hung jury into a conviction, and it is also the kind of decision that appellate courts and defense attorneys will scrutinize closely.
Why Detectives Need to Understand This Rule
The Williams Rule is not only a prosecutor's tool. It begins with the detective. Prior incidents can only be presented in court if someone documented them, located the witnesses, and preserved the details that make them similar. An unfounded complaint, an Internal Affairs file that was never sustained, or a report that a victim later declined to pursue may one day become the evidence that proves a pattern. The Cabeza case taught me that a closed file is not necessarily a dead file.
Detectives should also understand the limits of the rule. Similarity matters. The prior acts must share distinctive features with the charged offense, not merely show that the defendant is a bad person. Investigators who record specifics, such as the method of approach, the words used, the type of injury, and the setting, give prosecutors what they need to show that the acts are connected by more than bad character. Sloppy or general reports make that argument harder, and they invite exactly the challenge raised in the Cosby appeal.
Today, domestic violence and sexual assault investigations are far more thorough than they were when I worked Internal Affairs or in the Homicide Unit. Even so, many of these cases still come down to one person's word against another's. When that happens, the patient work of documenting every complaint, even the ones that go nowhere, may be what finally gives a victim her day in court.
Sources
• Williams v. State, 110 So. 2d 654 (Fla. 1959)
• Federal Rule of Evidence 404
• NYSBA, "Hard Cases Make Bad Law: The Tortured History of the Bill Cosby Prosecution"
• NBC10 Philadelphia, Cosby conviction vacated (June 30, 2021)
• The Miami Herald, "Former police officer's sentencing for domestic abuse is postponed," May 8, 1999, p. 179 (clipping on file)
