STATE v. NOBLE (2026)

William G. Noble appeals the judgment of the Circuit Court of Bates County, Missouri (“trial court”), finding him guilty, following a jury trial, of one count of forcible sodomy in the first degree, section 566.060;¹ three counts of statutory sodomy in the first degree, section 566.062; and two counts of incest, section 568.020. On appeal, Noble claims that the trial court erred in: (1) overruling his objection and permitting the State to elicit testimony that Noble had physically abused his daughters because the alleged abuse constituted uncharged prior bad acts that were not relevant to the trial and (2) sustaining the State's objection and excluding Noble's offers of proof concerning evidence of prior false accusations by one of his victims where her credibility was at issue. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Factual and Procedural Background 2

Victim 2 was the eldest of Noble's four daughters, and Victim 3 was the third oldest.³ Victim 2 testified at Noble's trial that he sexually abused her when she was around four years old, which she knew because it occurred at a house they lived in before she started kindergarten. Victim 2 testified that she was in her parents’ bedroom with the lights off and that she was crying, when Noble approached her, told her to stop crying, and forced his penis into her mouth. Victim 3 testified that Noble abused her sexually when she was also four years old. She knew the abuse occurred at around this time because she still had her Care Bear baby blanket and because her younger sister could barely walk. Victim 3 testified that she was in bed with Noble, and he was touching his penis. Noble kept asking Victim 3 to touch him, and then he forced his testicles into her mouth while he continued to touch himself. Victim 3 testified that she didn't want Noble to get angry, and she didn't want to disobey him, so she just kept balling her fists around her Care Bear blanket. Victim 3 testified that another incident occurred when she was approximately six years old; Noble asked Victim 3 to help him with laundry, and once in the laundry room, he pulled her shorts off of her, touched her genitals, and put his fingers inside of her. Victim 3 could hear the sound of her younger sister watching a movie in another room at the time.

Victim 3 testified that after the two incidents, Noble told her that if anyone found out, her mother would not forgive her or love her anymore and also that “very bad things” would happen to her and her sisters. Victim 3 also testified that, when she was young, her home life was “very loud and very violent and aggressive”; Victim 3 also testified that her father physically beat her. Victim 3 testified that she witnessed Noble assault someone when they were getting groceries “over something simple as him running his shopping cart into ours.” Victim 2 also testified that when she was young “there would be a lot of physical abuse” where she was “held down by [her] throat” “because that's how you show dominance with your dog, is what [Noble] told us.” Victim 2 testified that Noble punished them by “[t]hrowing knives, shouting, hitting us.”

Victim 2 testified that she did not tell anyone that she had been sexually abused at the time of the abuse; Victim 2 did disclose the sexual abuse to a medical professional in 2017, but she did not disclose Noble as the abuser. Victim 2 testified that the reason she did not disclose Noble as the abuser was that she had spoken to her mother before the forensic interview, and her mother told her that Noble would never do anything like that, and the allegation had “wrecked” her. In 2020, when Victim 2 again tried to tell her mother that Noble had sexually abused her, her mother shouted at her and told her it wasn't true. Finally, in 2024, Victim 2 contacted law enforcement and reported that Noble had sexually abused her.

When police began investigating Victim 2's reported abuse, they interviewed Victim 3, who also disclosed that Noble had abused her sexually on two occasions. Police eventually made contact with Victim 1, who disclosed that Noble had pulled her pants down and inserted his fingers into her vagina while she was approximately fifteen years old and while she was in the Noble home with her boyfriend, who was Noble's wife's younger brother. Victim 1 testified that she told Noble to stop and to get off of her, but he was much bigger than she was. Victim 1 had told her boyfriend and Noble's wife about the assault, and they denied it happened and told her to “shut up about it”; Victim 1 had never reported it to police prior to 2024.

Noble's second-oldest daughter, C.N., testified at Noble's trial. C.N. testified that Victim 2 had disclosed that Noble had sexually abused her, but C.N. did not want it “to get out” because it was embarrassing and because C.N. still had to live with her family, whereas Victim 2 had moved out by then. C.N. did not want Noble to get in trouble. C.N. testified that when she was younger “something did happen to me,” but she did not believe Noble was the abuser.

Although the trial court did not allow the testimony, Noble's counsel sought to introduce testimony that Victim 3 had made false allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against other men in the past, and C.N. was called as part of an offer of proof. C.N. testified that C.N. and Victim 3 worked together at McDonald's when they were teenagers, Victim 3 made allegations that at least one co-worker had made inappropriate comments about Victim 3 and “slapp[ed] her butt,” but that when the restaurant manager reviewed store video, Victim 3 and the co-worker were not working in the same area of the restaurant, so it could not have happened the way Victim 3 claimed. C.N. testified that Victim 3 later admitted “on the way to school” that the coworker did not actually slap Victim 3's butt, but C.N. was “not sure on the year” that Victim 3 recanted this claim.

Victim 3 was also called by Noble as part of his offer of proof regarding the allegedly false allegations. Victim 3 testified that a male co-worker “had made a comment about my bottom.” Victim 3 told her sister, C.N., who was a manager at the restaurant because the comment made her uncomfortable; Victim 3 testified that she frequently went into the kitchen and interacted with the other employees even though she was not scheduled to work in the kitchen. Victim 3 testified that the general manager of the restaurant never followed up on the matter, and Victim 3 eventually left her employment at McDonald's. The trial court denied both offers of proof and excluded the testimony regarding what Noble claimed were prior false allegations.

The jury found Noble guilty on all counts. This appeal follows.

Standard of Review

We review a trial court's rulings regarding the admission of evidence for abuse of discretion. State v. Howell, 626 S.W.3d 758, 770 (Mo. App. W.D. 2021). “Circuit courts have broad discretion to admit or exclude evidence during a criminal trial, and error occurs only when there is a clear abuse of that discretion.” State v. Hollowell, 643 S.W.3d 329, 336 (Mo. banc 2022) (internal quotation omitted). A defendant must also show that any evidentiary error on the part of the trial court “improperly influenced the jury to a point at which there is a reasonable probability that, but for the improperly admitted [or excluded] evidence, the jury would have reached a different result.” Id. at 337.

Analysis

Admission of evidence of past physical abuse

Noble's first point on appeal is that the trial court erred in admitting testimony that Noble physically abused his daughters when they were young. Noble contends that the evidence of these “uncharged prior bad acts” “had no logical or legal relevance to the proceedings.” We disagree.

“Evidence of prior uncharged misconduct is inadmissible for the sole purpose of showing the propensity of the defendant to commit such acts.” State v. Miller, 372 S.W.3d 455, 473 (Mo. banc 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, among other exceptions, “evidence of uncharged crimes that are part of the circumstances or the sequence of events surrounding the offense charged may be admissible to present a complete and coherent picture of the events that transpired.” Id. at 474 (internal quotation omitted). Part of the “complete and coherent picture of the events” may well include why a victim of abuse may not have reported the abuse earlier. See id. (“The evidence of physical abuse toward E.N.M.’s mother and brothers does tend to give a ‘complete and coherent picture of the events that transpired,’ more specifically why E.N.M. did not speak up earlier about the abuse that had been going on for eight years.”).

During Noble's trial, his trial counsel repeatedly attempted to impeach the Victims’ accounts of sexual abuse by questioning why they delayed telling their mother about the abuse, why Victim 2 originally reported that the abuse against her was perpetrated by someone other than Noble, and why Victim 2 and Victim 3 did not report the sexual abuse when they were questioned by detectives in 2017 as part of a forensic examination. The testimony regarding Noble's volatile nature, anger, and physical abuse against them, as he notes, was not the same type of abuse alleged in the charges for which he stood trial. However, the violent nature and physical abuse, along with the Victims’ desire not to lose their family when their community had abandoned them after their parents’ prior arrest,⁴ was part of the “complete and coherent picture” of why Victims 2 and 3 waited so many years to report their abuse. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing this testimony as it was both legally and logically relevant.

Noble's Point I is denied.

Evidence of prior false allegations by Victim 3

Noble's second and third points on appeal claim that the trial court abused its discretion in excluding evidence that Victim 3 had made prior false accusations of sexual assault against at least one male co-worker, and possibly other men, even though there was “no physical or corroborating evidence” to support Victim 3's allegations, because the false allegations impeached Victim 3's credibility which, “as key complaining witness was always at issue, and where the record supports that [Victim 3's] prior allegation of sexual abuse was in fact false.” Noble sought to impeach Victim 3's credibility with her own testimony about these allegedly false allegations (Point II of his appeal) and with testimony from C.N. that Victim 3's allegations against co-workers were false (Point III of his appeal).

As Noble argues in his brief, where a witness's credibility is at issue in proving the defendant's guilt, evidence that the witness had made a prior false allegation is relevant to her credibility and may be admissible if the witness knew that the prior allegation was false when it was made. State v. Davison, 636 S.W.3d 588, 595 (Mo. App. W.D. 2021). Noble points to nothing in Victim 3's testimony during the offer of proof that supports his allegation that she made a prior false allegation of sexual assault. Victim 3 testified that a male co-worker at McDonald's had made a comment about her buttocks but that the general manager never took any action against the co-worker. Victim 3 never testified that her allegation against the coworker was false or that she ever spoke with the general manager about the incident. Although Noble's brief argues that the general manager never found video camera footage supporting Victim 3's allegation, the manager, who was the only person with access to camera footage, did not testify. And although the brief argues that Victim 3, who was a cashier, never worked with the male co-worker, who worked in the kitchen, Victim 3 testified that she went into the kitchen frequently and interacted with employees there. In short, there is no evidence from the offer of proof that Victim 3 ever made any false allegations against anyone.

Neither does C.N.’s testimony support Noble's impeachment of Victim 3 with prior false allegations sufficiently to establish that it was an abuse of the trial court's discretion to have excluded the evidence. While C.N. testified at trial that Victim 3 accused “almost every guy she worked with” of “slapping her butt” or “talking to her inappropriately,” she could only remember one specific instance of Victim 3 making such an accusation, and Victim 3 made the accusation to C.N., her sister. C.N. was a manager at the McDonald's and was Victim 3's supervisor. Victim 3 testified she reported the incident to C.N. so that C.N. would look out for her and because she was uncomfortable. While C.N. believed the allegation to have been false because “it was proved on camera that [Victim 3] never even worked with them,” C.N. never viewed any of the camera footage. Moreover, to the extent the general manager and C.N. thought the alleged incident was false because Victim 3 did not “work with” the kitchen staff, Victim 3 testified that she regularly walked through the kitchen and interacted with the kitchen staff even though she was scheduled as a cashier, and C.N. acknowledged that Victim 3 could have had contact with the kitchen staff when C.N. wasn't present. The general manager's decision not to follow through on discipline for the co-worker does not establish that Victim 3's allegation was false. Finally, although C.N. testified that Victim 3 later recanted her allegation against the co-worker, she could not recall when Victim 3 recanted, and C.N. did not report the recantation when she was interviewed by law enforcement or by Noble's trial counsel; “It was something [she] just remembered” while she was on the witness stand. While the trial court did not set forth the reasons for the exclusion of this evidence, it is possible that the trial court found C.N.’s testimony not to be credible and the scant evidence that Victim 3 made any prior knowingly false allegations to be insufficient to allow the testimony into evidence before the jury. We do not find this ruling to be an abuse of discretion.

Points II and III are denied.

Conclusion

For all of the above-stated reasons, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

FOOTNOTES

1.   All statutory references are to the Revised Statutes of Missouri as updated to the dates of the respective offenses.

3.   Pursuant to section 595.226, we do not use the names of the victims.

4.   Noble and his wife were arrested in 2017 in connection with an incident where another individual had shot a police officer. Noble had purchased the weapon used in the shooting, and he allowed the shooter to stay in his home after the shooting. The forensic examination that the Nobles’ children participated in in 2017 was pursuant to the arrest of their parents and not to any allegations of abuse.

Gary D. Witt, Presiding Judge

All concur