Commonwealth v. Figueroa — Excessive Prior Bad Act Evidence Vacates Child Sexual Abuse Convictions
The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated all judgments and set aside all verdicts in a child sexual abuse prosecution, holding that the trial judge abused her discretion by allowing prior bad act testimony covering forty-two transcript pages to overwhelm the twenty-six pages of testimony on the charged conduct. The court stressed that trial judges have an independent duty to control the volume of prior bad act evidence and that limiting instructions cannot cure the prejudice when such evidence is so voluminous as to invite a propensity inference in a credibility-dependent case.