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THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
___________________________
Strafford
No. 99-008
THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
v.
CARL CARLSON
February 15, 2001
Philip T. McLaughlin, attorney general (Douglas N. Jones, assistant attorney general, on the brief and orally), for the State.
Risa Evans, assistant appellate defender, of Concord, by brief and orally, for the defendant.
MANGONES, J., superior court justice, specially assigned under RSA 490:3. The defendant, Carl Carlson, appeals his conviction of felonious sexual assault, RSA 632-A:3, II (1996), for unlawfully engaging in sexual penetration with a person who was under the age of sixteen. The defendant argues that the Superior Court (Nadeau, J.) erred by ruling that he had opened the door to evidence of his prior sexual encounter with another underaged female and by refusing to grant a mistrial based upon the prejudicial impact of such evidence. The defendant also appeals the trial court's ruling that he was chargeable for a probation violation based upon conduct underlying the criminal conviction because the court failed to find, and the State failed to prove, that he knew the victim was under the age of legal consent. We affirm.
I
The following facts were adduced at trial. On March 30, 1998, at approximately 11:00 p.m., the victim, who was fifteen years of age, and two other girls ages sixteen and thirteen, ran away from a group home where they resided. While they were hitchhiking, a vehicle with several male occupants stopped and gave them a ride. The girls said that they needed a place to stay for the night. The men drove them to a shopping plaza to use a pay phone and left them there.
A short while later, the men encountered the defendant and told him about the girls. The defendant, who was with his brother, decided to go meet the girls with the hope of having sex that night. He had told his brother earlier that evening that he was having some relationship problems with his fianc