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Originally Posted by digamma
Motive of Brown is not relevant here. He is not on trial. (He's dead.) So the only trials it could possibly come up in are that of the officer or the accomplice to the robbery (if he's arrested)?
Per today's news, the officer did not know that Brown had been involved or suspected in a robbery. He stopped, approached, spoke to, whatever Brown for another reason. What ends up mattering in any potential trial of the cop is whether his perception of Brown's force or threat was reasonable.
The release of the convenience store footage is a red herring and either sloppy work by the police department or, worse, a deliberate attempt to attack the character of Brown.
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If you're representing a murder defendant, and your best defense is that the murder victim attacked your client first, and that things spiraled out of control from there - aren't you trying to get in evidence of the motive for that attack? I think it'd be ineffective assistance not to, and I can't see any way a judge doesn't allow that under Missouri's version of F.R.E. 404(b). Even if you're just trying to show that something is manslaughter or 2nd-degre murder instead of 1st-degree murder. There's no way potential evidence of the origin of the confrontation doesn't get in, unless it's really clear that the confrontation started for some completely different reason from both perspectives.
There's SOME point where the evidence has a 403 problem, in that it's substantially more prejudicial than probative, like if the shooting happened the next day or something. But when it's defense evidence, you have to lean towards letting it in. Excluding defense evidence unless it's obviously inadmissible just guarantees another thing that's fought over on appeal.