WILLIAMS v. STATE, 2021 OK CR 19

Eric Rayman Williams was convicted by an Oklahoma County jury of two counts of Indecent or Lewd Acts With a Child Under Sixteen (21 O.S. § 1123) and sentenced to 35 and 30 years, concurrent; must serve 85% before parole.
Appellant appealed raising five propositions: (I) deficient jury instructions (age element), (II) improper admission of child-sexual-propensity evidence, (III) prosecutorial misconduct in closing, (IV) Count Two did not allege a committed crime, and (V) cumulative error.
Trial court admitted prior-child-molestation propensity evidence under 12 O.S. § 2414 and gave limiting instructions to the jury.
On instructions, appellant argued the jury should have been required to find the victim was under 12 for sentencing enhancement; defense objected on different grounds at trial.
The panel found an instructional error as to the under-12 finding (per Chadwell) but held it harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given overwhelming evidence of the victim’s age; all other claims were rejected on their merits or as not plainly erroneous.
Judgment and sentence were affirmed; one justice specially concurred on statutory interpretation (recorded sexual acts included), another concurred in part and dissented as to Count Two (would remand/reverse, arguing Count Two required acts performed in the child’s physical presence).

Issue	Williams' Argument	State's Argument	Held
Jury instruction on age element for enhanced punishment	Jury should have been required to find victim under 12 beyond reasonable doubt	No contemporaneous objection to that specific instruction; any error subject to plain-error review	Error existed but was harmless beyond reasonable doubt; proposition denied
Admissibility of child-sexual-propensity evidence	Propensity evidence was unfairly prejudicial	Met statutory admissibility factors; probative value not substantially outweighed by prejudice	Trial court did not abuse discretion; evidence admissible; proposition denied
Prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument	Prosecutor’s comments deprived Williams of fair trial	Comments were reasonable argument; misstatement was inadvertent and not prejudicial	No misconduct rendering verdict unreliable; proposition denied
Elemental sufficiency/instruction for Count Two (whether acts must be performed live in child’s presence)	Count Two required sexual acts to be performed in child’s physical presence; here acts were on TV so statute not satisfied	Statute language does not plainly require physical presence of actors; no controlling precedent; no plain error	No plain or obvious error; proposition denied
Cumulative error	All errors together deprived Williams of a fair trial	No multiple errors to cumulate; verdict reliable	No cumulative error; proposition denied

Chadwell v. State, 446 P.3d 1244 (Okla. Crim. App. 2019) (jury must find victim under 12 beyond reasonable doubt for elevated starting sentence)
Black v. State, 21 P.3d 1047 (Okla. Crim. App. 2001) (preservation rules; objections made at trial limit appellate claims)
Neloms v. State, 274 P.3d 161 (Okla. Crim. App. 2012) (abuse-of-discretion standard for evidentiary rulings admitting propensity evidence)
Mahdavi v. State, 478 P.3d 449 (Okla. Crim. App. 2020) (prosecutorial-misconduct relief only if trial rendered fundamentally unfair)
Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168 (U.S. 1986) (standard for prosecutorial misconduct affecting trial fairness)
Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1 (U.S. 1999) (harmless-error standard for omitted jury-findings)
Head v. State, 146 P.3d 1141 (Okla. Crim. App. 2006) (presumption jurors follow limiting/instructional directions)