State v. Ritrovato

How courts have described this case

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

• recognizing that \[t]his court has a basic judicial duty to avoid deciding a constitutional issue if a nonconstitutional ground exists that will dispose of the case\ [internal quotation marks omitted]
• recognizing that “[t]his court has a basic judicial duty to avoid deciding a constitutional issue if a nonconstitutional ground exists that will dispose of the case” [internal quotation marks omitted]
• holding that improper exclusion of evidence pertinent to minor victim's credibility \would have cast sufficient doubt on [her] credibility [so as] to have influenced the jury's verdict on the sexual assault charges\
• concluding that exclusion of impeachment evidence of alleged victim’s prior sexual conduct rebutting her testimony that she was a virgin was not harmless error with respect to sexual assault charges
• holding that improper exclusion of evidence pertinent to minor victim’s credibility ‘‘would have cast sufficient doubt on [her] credibility [so as] to have influenced the jury’s verdict on the sexual assault charges’’
• noting that in sexual assault cases, evidence not strong when there is no conclusive physical evidence and victim is minor

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).