Opinion ID: 2274164
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trial Court Properly Excluded Evidence of K.B.'s Collateral Sexual Conduct.

Text: Montgomery next contends that the trial court erroneously excluded several pieces of evidence and that by so doing it usurped his right to present a defense. His defense, essentially, was that K.B. had falsely accused him of sex crimes because she resented his discipline and wished to remove him from the family. In addition to an attack upon various inconsistencies within and among K.B.'s different accounts of the alleged incidents in her statements to police officers and to the prosecutor, this defense involved several lines of proof. One such line was that K.B. had a history of making false accusations against Montgomery, with the implication that the current accusations were false as well. Another line of proof was that K.B. was a wild, sexually precocious child which Montgomery argued was relevant to two aspects of his defense: first that she resented his attempts to discipline and control her and thus had a motive to have him out of her life; and second that, despite her youth, she had the knowledge and lack of compunction necessary to make credible, albeit false, allegations of sexual misbehavior. Yet another line of proof was that K.B. had in the past and was again using false allegations against Montgomery to deflect allegations of wrong doing against herself. Although Montgomery was permitted to introduce some evidence along each of these lines of proof, the trial court excluded some evidence pertinent to each line as well. Montgomery maintains that the exclusions were erroneous under the rules of evidence and denied him his constitutional right to present a meaningful defense. We consider each line of proof in turn, beginning with Montgomery's attempt to show that K.B. had accused him falsely in the past.