State v. Richins, 2021 UT 50 (Aug. 19, 2021)

The supreme court reversed the court of appeals, vacated the defendant’s conviction for lewdness, and remanded for a new trial where the state was allowed to admit evidence of prior instances of lewd behavior under the doctrine of chances, over a Rule 403(b) objection. The court held that the doctrine of chances can potentially apply to admit evidence of prior conduct to rebut a claim of the victim fabricating an event, but in order to prevent an end run around Rule 404(b), the court must evaluate whether the other acts evidence is material to a disputed issue; must properly evaluate the frequency of the other acts based on data, not intuition; and must consider whether Rule 403 requires exclusion of the evidence.