Memorandum decisions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Judge MANNHEIMER.

Troy D. Adams appeals his convictions for second-degree assault and fourth-degree assault.1 Both of these convictions were based on evidence that Adams assaulted his girlfriend, Kendra Skultka-Esparza.

Adams contends that the evidence presented at his trial was legally insufficient to support his convictions, and he also contends (in the alternative) that the trial judge committed error by allowing the State to introduce evidence that Adams had assaulted Skultka-Esparza on a separate occasion several months before.

With regard to Adams's argument about the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions, we acknowledge that the evidence presented at Adams's trial was conflicting. In particular, Skultka-Esparza took the stand and testified that she did not remember being assaulted in any manner. She asserted that she was in an alcohol-induced blackout at the time. Skultka-Esparza also claimed to have no memory of the statements she made to the troopers who arrived to investigate the reported assault, and no memory of the testimony she later presented to the grand jury.

But the jurors heard an audio recording of the statements that Skultka-Esparza made to the troopers, and an audio recording of Skultka-Esparza's grand jury testimony. The jurors also heard the testimony of the two troopers who investigated the assault, and who described Skultka-Esparza's physical injuries.

When a defendant claims that the evidence was insufficient to support a criminal conviction, the question an appellate court must resolve is whether, viewing all of the evidence (and the reasonable inferences to be drawn from it) in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, reasonable jurors could conclude that the State had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.2 We have reviewed the evidence in Adams's case, and we conclude that fair-minded jurors could have found Adams guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence was therefore legally sufficient to support the assault convictions.

With regard to Adams's argument that the trial judge should not have allowed the State to introduce evidence of Adams's prior assault on Skultka-Esparza, we note that Adams was being tried for acts of domestic violence. In such prosecutions, Alaska Evidence Rule 404(b)(4) expressly authorizes the admission of evidence of a defendant's other acts of domestic violence.

Adams argues that this evidence presented a potential for unfair prejudice that outweighed whatever probative value it had. (See our discussion of this point in Bingaman v. State, 76 P.3d 398, 413-16 (Alaska App. 2003).) But given Skultka-Esparza's trial testimony (in which she essentially recanted her earlier accusations), the trial judge could reasonably conclude that the earlier assault was particularly probative in Adams's case — both because it tended to prove Adams's propensity to engage in domestic assault on his girlfriend, and because it suggested a motive for Skultka-Esparza to disavow her earlier accusations of assault. We thus conclude that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he concluded, under Evidence Rule 403, that the danger of unfair prejudice did not outweigh the probative value of this evidence.

The judgement of the superior court is AFFIRMED.