State v. Fortin

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

O’HERN, J.

This is a capital murder case. The State has charged the defendant with killing a woman in a savage sexual assault. There are two issues in this interlocutory appeal. The first issue is whether the Law Division erred in ruling that the prosecution could introduce evidence of a similar crime in Maine on the issue of identity under N.J.R.E. 404(b). The State offered the evidence to show similarities between an incident in which defendant sexually assaulted and strangled a state trooper in Maine and the sexual assault and murder for which he is…