Eric Stevens v. State of Arkansas

Summary

The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed Eric Stevens’s conviction for second-degree sexual assault. The court held that Stevens’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence arguments were not preserved because his directed-verdict motions did not specifically challenge the elements at issue on appeal. The court also upheld the exclusion of alleged impeachment evidence concerning a prior false accusation by the victim, concluding that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion and that any error was harmless.

Holdings

1. A defendant may not change the grounds of a directed-verdict motion on appeal. Because Stevens argued below that sleep was not unconsciousness but argued on appeal that MC was not asleep when the assault began, his physical-helplessness challenge was not preserved.
2. A sufficiency challenge is not preserved when the directed-verdict motion fails to challenge the specific element supporting the conviction. Stevens challenged sexual intercourse and deviate sexual activity below, but not sexual contact, the element required for his second-degree-sexual-assault conviction.
3. A formal proffer is not required when the substance of excluded evidence is apparent from the context. The substance of Stevens's proposed testimony was sufficiently developed during the hearing on the motion in limine, so the evidentiary issue was preserved.
4. The circuit court did not abuse its discretion by excluding evidence that MC allegedly made a prior false accusation against Stevens. The evidence had minimal probative value, was unsupported by independent proof, and its admission would have revealed otherwise inadmissible juvenile-delinquency information; its probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.
5. Even assuming the circuit court erred in excluding the impeachment evidence, any error was harmless because the evidence of Stevens's guilt was overwhelming and the alleged error was slight.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Stevens preserved his challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the physically helpless and sexual-contact elements of second-degree sexual assault.
2. Whether the circuit court abused its discretion by excluding evidence that MC allegedly had previously made a false accusation that Stevens supplied her with drugs.
3. If exclusion of the impeachment evidence was error, whether the error was harmless.

Disposition

affirmed