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Hall v. State

The trial court properly excluded the victim's prior accusation of molestation because defendant failed to show that the accusation had a reasonable probability of being false.

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Burnam Melvin Hall appeals his convictions of two counts of child molestation and two counts of distributing obscene material. He claims that the trial court erred by 1 not allowing him to present evidence that one of the alleged victims had made a prior false accusation of sexual misconduct against a different man, and 2 charging the jury on the entire statutory definition of distributing obscene material. Because both claims lack merit, we affirm.

The charges against Hall arose from separate incidents on different dates. With respect to the first incident, the State’s evidence showed that on April 1, 2000, 15-year-old T. H. was asleep on a mattress in the living room of her grandfather’s house. Her brother and his 16-year-old girlfriend, T. G., were sleeping on another bed in the room. T. H. awakened when her uncle, Hall, began touching her vagina under her clothes. She rolled over, and he touched her buttocks. She told him to leave her alone and pretended to go back to sleep. According to T. H., Hall then moved over to T. G. and put his hand down her pants. T. G. testified that she woke up to find Hall fondling her vagina and that he later inserted his finger there. T. H. told Hall to leave T. G. alone, at which point Hall left the room. At trial, Hall denied touching either girl inappropriately.

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