Prior Bad Acts Evidence in Lewd Act
The South Carolina Supreme Court recently held that evidence of prior bad acts of a defendant are not admissible unless motive or intent are at issue with the case. This is classically referred to as 404 Evidence. The United States Attorney will many times use this evidence to prove a case in Federal Court. The Supreme Court of South Carolina previously ruled under State v. Lyle (1923) evidence of other crimes may not be used to infer that the defendant committed the charged crime in this specific case. In South Carolina and many federal courts cases are built on character evidence and not on any real investigation. The conspiracy count of an indictment provides the basis for a conviction when there is no evidence that a defendant did any actual act that was illegal when viewed outside of the criminal conspiracy. In South Carolina the favorite slogan is the "Hand of one - is the hand of all." In lay terms, this means you should never talk to anyone that may be involved in a criminal conspiracy that you do not even know exists. Federal defense attorneys spend most of their careers defending conspiracy charges. In state court this particular count is not used on a regular basis. However, almost every federal indictment includes a conspiracy county. It is the catch all count that is extremely hard to defeat.
Many federal indictments only have one count. The conspiracy count is the allegation that someone agreed with someone else to break the law. The government does not have to prove who the other person in the agreement was in court. Going back to the Lyle evidence, this allows the government to prove your guilt by your prior acts. Once a juror hears you have been convicted of a previous crime or your past actions were criminal, it is very easy to check the guilty verdict box. It is hard to keep this evidence out of the trial, but it can be done on occasion. A good defense attorney is the first step in fighting a criminal charge.
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