Orvin Harris v. State of Mississippi, 165 So. 3d 473

Harris was convicted of two counts of gratification of lust and sentenced to 15 years on each count, consecutive, with certain fines and sex-offender registration.
The convictions arose from alleged sexual abuse of Harris’s minor granddaughter T.M. and testimony from adult stepdaughters about past abuse.
The State sought admission of T.M.’s hearsay statements under Rule 803(25) tender-years exception and the trial court admitted them after a hearing.
Harris challenged the admission of his adult stepdaughters’ prior bad-act testimony (Susan and Mary) under Rules 404(b) and 403 with limiting instructions.
The trial court conducted on-the-record analyses for both the prior-bad-acts and tender-years evidence, and the jury received limiting instructions.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s rulings, concluding no abuse of discretion in admitting either type of evidence.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether prior bad acts of a sexual nature were admissible	Harris	Harris	Admissible under Derouen/403/404(b) with limiting instruction
Whether tender-years hearsay statements were sufficiently reliable	State	Harris	Admissible under Rule 803(25) after reliability findings

Derouen v. State, 994 So. 2d 748 (Miss. 2008) (allows 404(b) evidence of other acts in sex offenses with 403 filtering and limiting instructions)
Young v. State, 106 So. 3d 811 (Miss. Ct. App. 2011) (upholds admissibility of prior acts with proper analysis and limiting instruction)
Gore v. State, 37 So. 3d 1178 (Miss. 2010) (affirmed admission of adult-child sexual-abuse testimony with limiting instruction)