Coningford v. State of RI, No. 08-2219 (1st Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseIn the defendant's trial for second-degree child molestation, the state trial court admitted evidence that the defendant had molested two other young men. The court found that the prior bad acts were sufficiently similar to the crime charged to show a scheme, modus operandi, or common plan to molest young boys in the defendant's home and that the probative worth of this evidence outweighed any unfairly prejudicial effect. The state supreme court affirmed defendant's conviction. The federal district court denied a petition for habeas corpus. The First Circuit affirmed. The defendant did not exhaust state remedies; in his state appeal he cited no specific constitutional provision, tendered no substantive federal claim, and relied on no federal constitutional precedent. Rejecting the merits of the claim, the court noted that the Supreme Court has not laid down a governing rule concerning the admission of prior bad acts evidence and held that admitting the evidence was not so arbitrary as to deny defendant a fair trial.
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