State v. R. Donahue

Summary

The Montana Supreme Court affirmed Donahue’s convictions and the denial of his motion for a new trial. It held that violent-character evidence may be offered to show that a victim was likely the initial aggressor without proof that the defendant knew of the victim’s character, but any error in excluding the challenged statements was nonprejudicial. Donahue failed to preserve his bias-related evidentiary argument, and he did not show that technical deviations in jury-notification procedures affected the randomness, objectivity, or fair-cross-section character of the jury pool.