Background
James Richard King and Lexie Walters spent September 16, 2020, drinking together before returning to their Virginia Beach hotel room. King turned himself in the next morning and directed police to Walters’s body, which was partially undressed and covered with a blanket on a couch. Walters had extensive injuries, including blunt-force trauma to her perineum and anus, and died from asphyxiation. King told police that he could not remember the details because he had consumed substantial alcohol, but he also said that he had “flipped out before” and referenced a prior Ohio murder.
Over King’s objection, the trial court admitted evidence that he had been convicted of murdering Janis Kloshen in Ohio in 1986. Trial evidence showed that Kloshen was found naked on King’s bed, partially covered, with a pillow over her face and visible injuries; alcohol was present nearby. King had also turned himself in and made an incriminating statement after that killing. A jury convicted King of first-degree murder, first-degree murder during object sexual penetration, and object sexual penetration. The circuit court later vacated the felony-murder conviction on double-jeopardy grounds, leaving the first-degree-murder and object-sexual-penetration convictions at issue.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Considering only the evidence actually presented at trial, the majority held that the 1986 murder evidence was admissible under Virginia Rule of Evidence 2:404(b) because it was relevant to King’s criminal intent and to rebut his contention that Walters’s death was an accident arising from sexual activity. The court relied on similarities including the victims’ positioning and partial covering, their visible injuries, the presence of alcohol, evidence permitting an inference of asphyxiation in both incidents, and King’s surrender and incriminating statements after each death.
The majority also found no abuse of discretion in concluding that the evidence’s legitimate probative value outweighed its incidental prejudice. The jury received a limiting instruction, and the 34-year interval did not eliminate the evidence’s probative value because King was incarcerated for much of that period. Applying the right-result-different-reason doctrine, the court declined to decide whether the evidence qualified as proof of modus operandi, the ground relied upon below, because intent and absence of mistake or accident independently supported admission.
Judge Raphael concurred, explaining that the evidence’s relevance could also be understood through the “doctrine of chances”: two deaths occurring in King’s presence under exceptionally similar circumstances made accident less probable without requiring a propensity inference. Judge Chaney dissented, reasoning that the trial judge failed to reassess admissibility after the Commonwealth presented materially less evidence at trial than at the pretrial hearing and that the appellate court should not perform the missing relevance and prejudice analysis itself. The dissent also concluded that the error was not harmless because the prosecution used the prior murder to establish the disputed premeditation element.
Key Takeaways
- Prior-crime evidence may be admitted under Rule 2:404(b) when it bears on intent or rebuts mistake or accident, even if the appellate court does not decide whether it establishes a distinctive modus operandi.
- An appellate court reviewing admissibility must evaluate the evidence actually introduced at trial, not merely the more extensive record presented during a pretrial hearing.
- Remoteness does not automatically defeat admissibility; intervening incarceration and the logical connection between the incidents may preserve probative value.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates Virginia’s inclusionary treatment of other-acts evidence when the prosecution identifies a relevant, non-propensity purpose and the evidence survives Rule 2:404(b)’s heightened balancing requirement. It also shows how a limiting instruction, factual similarities, and intervening incarceration can affect that analysis.
The separate opinions expose an important appellate issue: whether affirmance on an alternative evidentiary rationale properly sustains a conviction when the trial court relied on another theory and declined to reconsider its ruling after the trial proof changed. The dissent viewed that omission as an unperformed discretionary judgment that could not be supplied on appeal.