John Vigna v. Maryland

In this criminal case, the Maryland court, in a trial for sexual abuse of a child, excluded evidence of the petitioner’s character trait of appropriate interaction with children in his care, saying that the trait was too narrowly defined and irrelevant. The Maryland Court of Appeals disagreed with the trial court and held that, while this category of character evidence was relevant, the exclusion of it was harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt under Maryland statutory review and federal constitutional review. The question to this Court is whether the denial of an accused request to introduce credible and relevant evidence that directly rebuts and contradicts the prior bad acts evidence introduced by the State violates the defendant’s fundamental right to a fair trial under the Bill of Rights and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Petitioner also questions the use of harmless error analysis in current appellate jurisprudence and the extent to which, as in this case, Appellate Courts are standing firmly in the role of both triers of fact, analyzing what jurors would think about evidence that was never introduced, as well as triers of law.