State v. Randy G

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been on probation in connection with his conviction of the crime of criminal violation of a protective order, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court revoking his probation and sentencing him to forty-four months of incarceration. During his proba- tion period, the victim, who was the defendant's former girlfriend, gave a statement to the police in which she stated that the defendant had come to her home, looked in her window and then left the premises on a bicycle. Thereafter, the defendant was arrested and charged with violating the condition of his probation that required him to comply with a protective order in effect, which prohibited him from contacting the victim and required him to stay 100 yards away from her. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting into evidence a police report concerning his prior arrest relating to the underlying conviction, which was based on his claim that the report was unreliable hearsay because it included details of a home invasion and an assault charge that the state had nolled; that court properly admitted the police report into evidence as reliable hearsay, as it is well settled that probation proceedings are informal and that strict rules of evidence do not apply to such proceed- ings, in which a broad evidentiary standard is applied, and because a probation hearing is merely a reconvention of the original sentencing hearing, the court could consider types of information properly consid- ered at that hearing, including evidence of crimes for which the defen- dant was charged but not prosecuted. 2. Contrary to the defendant's claim, the trial court did not abuse its discre- tion in refusing to admit into evidence a police report that was related to the victim's criminal complaint against a previous boyfriend: although the defendant claimed that the police report would have shown the victim's pattern of making false cl