Villegas (David) v. State, 59383

Villegas was convicted by jury of 3 counts of lewdness with a child under 14 and 1 count of attempted lewdness with a child under 14.
The alleged victim, A.V., was 5 years old when the alleged conduct occurred, spanning roughly 16 months.
Trial occurred in the Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County; Judge Valerie Adair presided.
Villegas challenges multiple trial rulings, including expert recognition, jury instructions, A.V.’s competency, admissibility of hearsay, and pretrial habeas issues.
The Nevada Supreme Court reverses in part and affirms in part, addressing each contention and vacating remanding the information on one count and the attempt conviction on another.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Expert testimony acknowledged but not expressly labeled as expert	Villegas argues district court erred by not expressly recognizing the expert	Villegas; court did not abuse discretion by permitting expert testimony without explicit label	No abuse of discretion
Whether the district court erred by denying Villegas's proposed particularity instruction	Villegas asserts lack of particularity of victim testimony	No required instruction on particularity; standard instructions sufficed	District court did not abuse discretion
A.V.'s competency to testify	Competency questioned; potential unreliability	A.V. competent as she could receive impressions and relate truthfully	A.V. deemed competent; no plain error
Admissibility of A.V.'s out-of-court statements (NRS 51.385)	Statements unreliable due to custody dispute, therapy, and coaching	District court properly found statements sufficiently trustworthy under NRS 51.385(2)	District court did not abuse discretion
Sufficiency/noticing of information and duplicative counts; redundancy of attempt conviction	Counts 1, 2, and 4 were duplicative; information failed to distinguish counts; potential double jeopardy	Some incidents distinguished; information adequate; avoid double jeopardy	Count 4 reversed for due process; Count 3 reversed for redundancy; other counts affirmed

Rose v. State, 123 Nev. 194, 163 P.3d 408 (Nev. 2007) (review of instruction discretion; burden of proof and reasonable doubt cover testimony particularity)
Crawford v. State, 121 Nev. 744, 121 P.3d 582 (Nev. 2005) (court may deny proposed jury instructions within discretion limits)
Mulder v. State, 116 Nev. 1, 992 P.2d 845 (Nev. 2000) (avoid phrasing witness as ‘qualified’ to prevent prejudice)
Wilson v. State, 96 Nev. 422, 610 P.2d 184 (Nev. 1980) (testimony competency vs credibility distinction)
Felix v. State, 109 Nev. 151, 849 P.2d 220 (Nev. 1993) (reliability of child hearsay under NRS 51.385(2) case-by-case)
Gaxiola v. State, 121 Nev. 638, 119 P.3d 1225 (Nev. 2005) (sequencing insufficient to support attempt vs completed act; require distinguishable acts)
Valentine v. Konteh, 395 F.3d 626, 632-35 (6th Cir. 2005) (indistinguishable counts fail double jeopardy notice; pattern/continuing course)
Van Valkenberg v. State, 95 Nev. 317, 317-18, 594 P.2d 707 (Nev. 1979) (avoid reviewing unwarranted given counsel acquiescence to instruction)