State v. Dern
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and two counts of aggravated criminal sodomy involving his three-year-old twin daughters. The bulk of the evidence at trial against Defendant was Defendant’s admissions to others, including law enforcement, that he had committed the offenses. Defendant received four life sentences. The court of appeals affirmed all four convictions. The Supreme Court (1) affirmed Defendant’s convictions for aggravated indecent liberties with a child and the consecutive life sentences imposed for them, holding, inter alia, that Defendant’s confessions concerning one victim were sufficiently truthworthy to establish the corpus delicti; but (2) reversed both aggravated criminal sodomy convictions, holding that the trial court improperly instructed the jury on alternative means of committing that crime without supporting evidence for each means presented to the jury, and the court of appeals erred in applying the invited error doctrine to preserve those convictions.
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