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Kelly v. State

Alaska Court of Appeals

116 P.3d 602 (2005)

Facts

James Kelly (defendant) was charged with third-degree sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree attempted sexual abuse of a minor, KP. In the summer of 1999, 13-year-old KP and 16-year-old TE visited Kelly and Stephan Andrews at Kelly’s house. TE was dating Andrews; Kelly met KP for the first time that night. The government (plaintiff) alleged that Kelly sexually touched and attempted to have sex with KP. KP rejected Kelly’s advances and left Kelly’s house. Kelly’s first trial ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. At Kelly’s second trial, the trial court refused to admit a hearsay statement that Kelly tried to introduce through Andrews’s testimony. Andrews would have testified that, on the night Kelly and KP met, Kelly told Andrews that Kelly thought KP was 16 years old (the hearsay statement). The jury convicted Kelly of both offenses. Kelly appealed, arguing that the trial court had erred by refusing to admit the hearsay statement because it was admissible evidence of Kelly’s state of mind at the time that Kelly made the statement. The government contested that the hearsay statement was inadmissible in part because it was Kelly’s self-serving, unreliable statement.

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Holding and Reasoning (Coats, C.J.)

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