Jeffrey Peterzalek and Molly Weber v. Iowa District Court for Polk County

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that past fires were relevant to determining whether present fire was set because “the frequency of past fires so closely associated with defendant logically suggested a lack of coincidence”
• noting that MRE 403 does not prohibit prejudicial evidence, only evidence that is unfairly prejudicial
• stating that “the doctrine is epitomized in arson cases in which apparently accidental fires befall property linked to the defendant with uncommon frequency”
• explaining that “[t]he acts or events need not bear striking similarity to the offense charged if the theory of relevance does not itself center on similarity”
• stating that the danger of unfair prejudice must be determined by weighing the value of the evidence for a proper purpose against the danger that the jury might consider an improper purpose
• explaining that “upon request, the trial court may provide a limiting instruction to the jury under MRE 105 to specify that the jury may consider the evidence only for proper, noncharacter purposes”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).