State v. Vickers

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from the trial court's judgment convicting him of, inter alia, sexually assaulting two women within ten minutes of each other in a Walmart store. He claimed, inter alia, that the court's denial of his motion to sever the charges against him was improper because the incidents as to each victim were separate and distinct and should have been tried separately. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant's motion to sever the charges and concluding that he would not be substantially prejudiced by trying the charges as to both victims together, as the evidence of each incident was cross admissible to establish the defendant's intent as to each victim, whose testimony was relevant to prove that he was the individual who committed both assaults in close temporal proximity in the same store. This court declined to review the defendant's claim that the trial court committed plain error by failing, sua sponte, to instruct the jury regarding the proper use of the evidence following the denial of his motion to sever the charges, as the defendant's claim was explicitly conditioned on a threshold determination by this court, which did not occur, that his failure to request or to challenge the absence of a limiting instruction constituted a waiver of his right to challenge the denial of the motion to sever, and the state acknowledged that he had not waived that right. Argued May 20—officially released October 29, 2024