State v. Davies

On March 13, 1976, A. J. Davies (defendant) met a woman and her friends at a nightclub. Davies asked the woman to have sex with him, but she refused. When the woman and her friends left the club at approximately 3:30 a.m., Davies ran up behind them and followed them into an alley. Davies pulled the woman away from her friends and threatened to shoot the woman when her friends tried to help her. Davies then choked the woman, causing her to lose consciousness. As the woman awoke, the police arrived and shined a flashlight at Davies. Davies jumped a fence and ran away. Davies went to his ex-girlfriend’s house and entered without her permission. Davies stayed in the house for a few hours, but when the ex-girlfriend’s friend asked Davies to leave the house, Davies became confrontational, tried to shove the friend and the friend’s sister, and threatened that he had a gun. Davies then left the ex-girlfriend’s house and went to another friend’s house. That friend called Davies’s mother, who called the police. Davies was subsequently apprehended by the police, and the State of Louisiana (plaintiff) charged him with crimes including attempted aggravated rape. At Davies’s trial, the court allowed testimony about Davies’s conduct between the time of the alleged rape and when the police officers eventually apprehended Davies. The jury found Davies guilty, and he appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court. On appeal, Davies argued that the trial court should not have admitted the testimony about his conduct after the alleged rape because it was irrelevant.