State v. Cote
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was found guilty of two counts of gross sexual assault. Defendant appealed, arguing that his due process rights were violated by the State’s failure to preserve a recording of a police interview of the victim and by the State’s twenty-two-year delay between the alleged assaults and the indictment. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the judgment, holding (1) Defendant did not prove the elements necessary to establish a violation of his constitutional rights due to the State’s loss of evidence where the missing recording was not apparently exculpatory at the time it was lost and because the State did not act in bad faith in causing its disappearance; and (2) the trial court did not err in finding that Defendant failed to meet his burden of proving prejudice from the pre-indictment delay.
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