State v. Lintzen

2015 UT App 68, 347 P.3d 433, 783 Utah Adv. Rep. 25, 2015 Utah App. LEXIS 70, 2015 WL 1353104
CourtCourt of Appeals of Utah
DecidedMarch 26, 2015
Docket20120814-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 2015 UT App 68 (State v. Lintzen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Utah primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Lintzen, 2015 UT App 68, 347 P.3d 433, 783 Utah Adv. Rep. 25, 2015 Utah App. LEXIS 70, 2015 WL 1353104 (Utah Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

Opinion

ROTH, Judge:

' 1 Defendant Anthony Lintzen appeals his conviction for aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first degree felony. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

[ 2 Lintzen sexually abused his stepdaughter (Stepdaughter) for several years. 2 The *435 first time the abuse occurred, Stepdaughter was in kindergarten or first grade and Lint-zen licked her genital area. Following this first incident, Lintzen continued to sexually abuse Stepdaughter in various ways over the next several years. Lintzen also showed her pornographic pictures and videos of adults and children engaged in sexual acts.

T3 Stepdaughter first reported the abuse to her biological father who told her that if Lintzen tried to abuse her again, Stepdaughter should tell her mother (Mother) or the police. Stepdaughter eventually reported the abuse to her sister, who told Mother. Mother asked Lintzen to move out, and he did so for a few weeks. In the meantime, at Lintzen's urging, Mother allowed Stepdaughter to talk with a family friend (Friend), a Peruvian citizen, who Lintzen believed "had some kind of background" related to child pornography cases. Friend spoke with Stepdaughter and then told Mother and Lintzen that it was his opinion that Stepdaughter was being exposed to pornographic material by someone but that it was not Lintzen. Lintzen convinced Mother that he had done nothing wrong and moved back in. Stepdaughter's allegations were not reported to authorities.

T 4 A few months later, in September 2011, when Stepdaughter was ten years old, Lint-zen abused Stepdaughter again while Mother was at work and Stepdaughter was home with her brother and sister (the Charged Incident). Her siblings were in the basement, and Stepdaughter fell asleep while watching television on Mother's bed. Lint-zen entered the room and began massaging Stepdaughter's back. When she started to wake up, he told her to go back to sleep and continued the massage, eventually massaging her breasts and genitals both over and under her clothing. Stepdaughter was alert enough to feel the touching and looked down to see Lintzen touching her vaginal area. After she awoke completely, Lintzen asked her if she had had a nice dream.

T5 A day or two later, Stepdaughter was waiting in the car with her sister when she saw her neighbor who was a police officer. Stepdaughter approached the officer and told him what Lintzen had done to her during the Charged Incident. The officer called the sheriffs office, and another officer spoke with Stepdaughter and filed a report. Stepdaughter was later interviewed by a detective at the Children's Justice Center (the CJC). She reported that Lintzen had abused her multiple times over the years and that some of these incidents had involved Lintzen penetrating her both vaginally and anally with his penis and his fingers, Stepdaughter also stated that, in addition to the touching she had reported earlier to officers, Lintzen had penetrated her with both his penis and his fingers during the Charged Incident.

T6 Lintzen was charged with aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Before trial, the State filed a motion in limine seeking admission of evidence of Lintzen's prior abuse of Stepdaughter. The trial court granted the motion, admitting evidence related to the prior incidents of sexual abuse under rule 404(c) of the Utah Rules of Evidence. The court admitted evidence of Stepdaughter's allegations that Lintzen showed her pornography under rule 404(b).

T7 Stepdaughter testified at trial. After she described the first time she was abused by Lintzen, Stepdaughter testified about the Charged Incident. When Stepdaughter described Lintzen touching her genitals with his hand, the State asked her whether his fingers "stay[ed] outside of [her] body, or did they ever go inside of [her] body" during the incident. Stepdaughter replied, "[Olut-side." 3 Stepdaughter then testified about other incidents of abuse that had occurred prior to the Charged Incident. Her testimo *436 ny about these events was also different from the statements she had made at the CJC about these same incidents because her testimony seemed to imply, at least in the defense's view, that no penetration, either vaginal or anal, had ever cccurred. 4

T8 The nurse practitioner who examined Stepdaughter after the Charged Incident (the Nurse) also testified at trial. The Nurse testified that she had recommended counseling for Stepdaughter and her entire family, including an evaluation regarding counseling for Stepdaughter's brother (Brother). When defense counsel asked the Nurse about the recommended evaluation and counseling for Brother, she explained that Mother had told her that Brother "had four or five years of problems with pornography and masturbating in front of his siblings." The Nurse also testified that Mother had told her "that if anyone could have been a sexual abuser it would have been [Brother]." Lintzen then moved for admission of the written medical report that the Nurse had prepared as a result of her examination and interviews with Stepdaughter and her family. The trial court denied the motion on hearsay grounds and also observed that the document contained essentially the same statements about Brother that the Nurse had already testified to and was therefore cumulative as well.

T9 The jury convicted Lintzen of one count of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Lintzen filed a motion for a new trial arguing that the trial court had erred in its evidentia-ry rulings by admitting the State's evidence of prior abuse and by excluding the Nurse's written report from evidence. He also argued that he was entitled to a new trial based on the discovery of new evidence, namely the testimony of Friend, whose whereabouts Lintzen had only recently discovered. 5 The trial court denied the motion, and Lintzen appeals.

ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

€{10 Lintzen argues that the trial court erred when it admitted evidence of his prior abuse of Stepdaughter at trial. "A trial court's admission of prior bad acts evidence is reviewed for abuse of discretion, but the evidence must be serupulously examined by trial judges in the proper exercise of that discretion." State v. Verde, 2012 UT 60, ¶ 13, 296 P.3d 678 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also State v. Bragg, 2013 UT App 282, ¶ 16, 317 P.3d 452.

T11 Lintzen also argues that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for a new trial. A trial court's denial of a motion for a new trial is reviewed for abuse of discretion. State v. Billingsley, 2013 UT 17, ¶ 9, 311 P.3d 995. The trial court's factual findings underlying the decision are reviewed for clear error, and the court's application of law to those facts is reviewed for correctness. Id.

ANALYSIS

I. The In Limine Order

§°12 Lintzen argues that the trial court "erred in entering the [in] limine order," which permitted evidence at trial of Lintzen's prior abuse of Stepdaughter.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2015 UT App 68, 347 P.3d 433, 783 Utah Adv. Rep. 25, 2015 Utah App. LEXIS 70, 2015 WL 1353104, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lintzen-utahctapp-2015.