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State v. Williams
Missouri Supreme Court
548 S.W.3d 275 (2018)
Facts
In 1996, Travis Williams (defendant) pled guilty to a sexual offense against a child. After his release from prison, Williams married a woman with a young daughter and molested the daughter. The prosecution (plaintiff) charged Williams with statutory sodomy and sought to sentence Williams as a predatory sexual offender based on Williams’s prior conviction. The court admitted the prior conviction under an amendment to Missouri’s constitution that allows evidence of prior crimes in prosecutions of sex crimes against children to show that the accused has a propensity to commit those types of crimes. Williams appealed, arguing that admitting prior-acts evidence to show propensity violates due process.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Wilson, J.)
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