The state supreme court recently reversed a death sentence and a first-degree murder conviction because the State presented “an excessive amount” of otherwise admissible Rule 404(b) evidence. How much is too much? Background. The case is State v. Hembree, from Gaston County. Seventeen-year-old Heather Catterton spent an evening with Danny Hembree doing drugs and having sex, then disappeared. Her nearly nude body was found almost two weeks later in a culvert in South Carolina. Two weeks after that, the body of another young woman, Randi Saldana, was found on a dirt road across the South Carolina line. Hembree confessed to both murders, though he also confessed to two Florida murders that seem never to have taken place. The trial judge’s Rule 404(b) ruling. The judge denied the State’s motion to join the two cases for trial. The Catterton case was tried first. The judge ruled that evidence of the Saldana murder was admissible under Rule 404(b) as evidence of a common scheme or plan. The judge noted that both victims were white female prostitutes who died in the defendant’s home after doing drugs and having sex with him; that both bodies were dumped in South Carolina; and that the deaths took place just a few weeks apart. The State’s evidence. Pursuant to the judge’s ruling, the State introduced evidence of the Saldana murder under Rule 404(b). The evidence regarding the Saldana killing was apparently rather extensive. The State “began to present this evidence on only the second day of the guilt-innocence [...]
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