State v. Baker

Citations

• 258 N.E.3d 1268
• 2024 Ohio 5990

Syllabus

Judgment reversed and cause remanded for a new trial. During a jury trial in which defendant was charged with one count of nonsupport of a dependent under R.C. 2919.21, the trial court erred by admitting the entirety of a divorce decree that contained dozens of hearsay and double hearsay statements prejudicial to defendant. Only three pages of the forty-page document were relevant to the issue of the amount of child support defendant allegedly failed to pay. The remainder of the document contained statements that were inadmissible under Evid.R. 404 because any probative value they held was outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, particularly because they were the product of another judge's fact finding that invited the jury to substitute its own credibility assessment with those made by the domestic court judge overseeing the divorce. Although defendant failed to timely object on any grounds other than relevance, there was a substantial probability that the admission of the divorce decree affected the outcome of the trial, warranting reversal under an plain error standard.