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.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Coats, C.J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 706,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 44,400 briefs, keyed to 983 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
