State v. Lake
Annotate this Case
The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the district court finding Defendant guilty of attempted deliberate homicide and sentencing him to serve an eighty-year prison term with no time suspended, holding that the district court prejudicially erred in one of its evidentiary rulings.
On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court abused its discretion by allowing the State to reference and elicit testimony regarding Defendant's prior child sex abuse comments and references in an explicit and repetitive manner. The Supreme Court agreed and remanded this case for a new trial, holding that the district court (1) did not abuse its discretion in denying Defendant's motion in liming to categorically exclude all references to Defendant's prior child sexual abuse comments and references; but (2) erred by failing to carefully limit the subject prior bad acts evidence to avoid its manifestly inherent risk of unfair prejudice.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.