Jeffrey Fairbanks v. State of Indiana

Rush, Chief Justice.

In criminal cases, Indiana Evidence Rule 404(b)'s purpose is to prevent the jury from indulging in the "forbidden inference"-that a defendant must be guilty of the charged crime because, on other occasions, he acted badly. To achieve this purpose, Rule 404(b) prohibits the State from introducing evidence of other bad acts to show a defendant's propensity to commit a crime. But the Rule permits this evidence for other purposes, including to show "lack of accident."

*566 Here, to prove that the death of Jeffrey Fairbanks's infant daughter was not an accident, the State introduced…