The Case Against Raymond Clark

With the arrest of Raymond Clark III for the murder of Annie Le, the investigation of this awful crime is now joined by legal process. It's very early in that process, though, and we don't know much about how the criminal case will proceed, especially since Clark did not enter a plea today (which was his prerogative at the arraignment) and authorities sealed his arrest warrant for 14 days.

But while a criminal trial, if one is to take place, is far away, some web posters already are speculating about whether jurors would hear about a 2003 complaint against Clark by his then-high school girlfriend, who reportedly said she tried to break up with Clark but he didn't want to. While school officials called the police (who created a report), the girlfriend never pressed charges.

Would this incident, something that lawyers call a "prior bad act" (if true), make its way into any proceedings in the Annie Le case? Connecticut law, like federal rules of evidence, does not allow prosecutors to introduce evidence of other bad acts at trial to prove that a defendant is a criminal person or has criminal tendencies. But those acts can be presented to a jury to show the defendant's intent, motive or that he had a common plan in both acts. And none of it comes in before the judge weighs whether that evidence would prejudice the jury more than illuminate the element of the case it's meant to prove.

Given the evidence authorities have already collected in this case, including DNA samples and records of Clark's time in the lab where Le was killed, it's not clear prosecutors will need to reach back to 2003 to make their case beyond a reasonable doubt. We'll know more when they start to reveal their theory of the case, and specifically why they think Raymond Clark killed Annie Le.