What is the test for admitting evidence of sexual assault in a murder trial?

The case of People v. Wood, 3 Parker, 681, [107 N.Y. 473]was also cited. That was a special term case, which arose upon an application to the learned justice who delivered the opinion for a stay of proceedings upon the conviction of the defendant

for murder. Evidence had been given of separate and distinct felonies committed by the prisoner for the purpose of showing motive on his part in the killing of the deceased. The learned court held that the evidence was admissible, because it tended to show with other evidence that the felonies were parts of a single transaction, influenced by a single motive and design to accomplish a single object; that they were all connected by unity of plot and design, and, if proved, would tend to show the motive which actuated the prisoner in taking the life of the person stated in the indictment. In that case, the evidence tended to show that each felonious act was a necessary one for the purpose of carrying out the main object which then existed in the mind of the prisoner, and that all of them formed but one transaction, and were connected together as parts of one whole. Now, the evidence in the case at bar was of no such character. At the time of its alleged occurrence no law had been passed. It did not appear, and could not appear, that at that time any law ever would be passed. It was an act remote in point of time, different in purpose, and of an entirely separate and distinct matter, forming no part of one main transaction, and, to my mind, coming nowhere near the standard for the admissibility of such evidence pronounced by all the cases which I have been able to find. The case of People v. Stout, 3 Parker, 672, contains the same general principles. There, evidence was admitted to the effect that the prisoner was seen in bed with the wife of the man he was charged with murdering, although such wife was also the prisoner's sister, and it was admitted as furnishing a motive for the prisoner to get the husband out of the way.