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Appellate panel hears dispute over prosecutors' 'election' of acts in three child‑sex convictions
Summary
An appellate panel heard arguments over whether the prosecution's narrowing of alleged acts at trial—and later closing arguments and jury instructions—allowed jurors to convict unanimously on three convictions for sexual offenses against a child or whether the process created reversible error under plain‑error review.
An appellate court heard oral argument over whether prosecutors improperly broadened or altered their selection of specific acts—known as the election of offenses—after the close of the state's case in a trial that produced three convictions for sexual offenses against a child.
The question at the core of the appeal is whether the state's act-by-act election at the close of its case in chief is the only point that matters on appeal, or whether the election is a continuing process that can be rendered insufficient by later closing arguments and the sequence in which the trial court instructed the jury.
Appellant's counsel opened the argument saying, “we've raised 1 issue on appeal,” and described three convictions returned by a jury in Gibson County Circuit Court. Counsel told the panel that the case presented a problem because the state's election at the close of its case allegedly narrowed certain acts to specific details, but later closing and rebuttal argument referred to other factual descriptions and the trial court read the…
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