The Alaska Court of Appeals has reversed the murder conviction of an Anchorage man involved in a deadly 2006 car crash.
In a split decision released Friday, the court said Superior Court Judge Michael Spaan erred in the murder trial of David T. Prince by allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence that Prince had previously been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Prince was convicted of second-degree murder, assault, driving under the influence, violating conditions of release and failure to appear in charges stemming from the crash that killed Pamela Miller.
Chief Judge Robert Coats and Judge David Mannheimer concluded that the chance of prejudicing a jury outweighed the relevance of Prince's previous conviction, which prosecutors said showed that Prince was aware of the dangers of driving drunk.
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