been attacked by a person who was considered a family friend and his 

grave injuries at the time he made the challenged statements to Holloway. 

To be admitted under the excited utterance exception to the 

hearsay rule, a statement must have been made when the declarant was 

still "under the stress of the startling event." Medina v. State, 122 Nev. 

346, 352, 143 P.3d 471, 475 (2006); see NRS 51.035; NRS 51.095. "The 

elapsed time between the event and the statement is a factor to be 

considered but only to aid in determining whether the declarant was 

under the stress of the startling event when he or she made the 

statement." Id. Although a transcript of the evidentiary hearing is not 

included in the appendix, nothing in the record suggests that the district 

court's factual findings are undeserving of deference, see generally Rincon 

v. State, 122 Nev. 1170, 1177, 147 P.3d 233, 238 (2006) (observing that, in 

reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, this court "does not act as a 

finder of fact" and that a district court's factual findings are "entitled to 

deference on appeal and will not be overturned by this court if supported 

by substantial evidence"), and the district court's application of the law is 

sound. We therefore conclude that appellant has not demonstrated that 

the district court abused its discretion by admitting Holloway's testimony. 

See Thomas v. State, 122 Nev. 1361, 1370, 148 P.3d 727, 734 (2006) 

(observing that admissibility of evidence falls within the sound discretion 

of the district court). 

Appellant next argues that, in response to two questions the 

jury submitted to the district court during deliberations, the district court 

improperly directed the jurors to review certain instructions to assist them 

in answering those questions. In doing so, appellant contends, the district 

court highlighted instructions requested by the State while denying his 

request to highlight an instruction related to his theory of defense. "The 

2 
J. 

trial judge has wide discretion in the manner and extent he answers a 

jury's questions during deliberation." Tellis v. State, 84 Nev. 587, 591, 445 

P.2d 938, 941 (1968). After hearing comments by the parties, the district 

court settled on eight instructions it deemed relevant to the jurors' 

questions. In a written note, the district court advised the jurors that the 

district court "was not at liberty to supplement instructions" and directed 

them to consider certain identified instructions that might be of assistance 

in answering the questions. The district court further advised the jurors 

that its intent was not to "overly emphasize any of these instructions over 

others, but merely to direct [the jury's] attention to instructions which 

may assist in answering [the jury's] questions" and that "Instruction 

number two instructs [the jury] to not single out any certain sentence or 

any individual point or instruction and ignore others, but to consider all of 

the instructions as a whole." Given the district court's written instruction 

to the jurors and our presumption that the jurors followed that 

instruction, see Allred v. State, 120 Nev. 410, 415, 92 P.3d 1246, 1250 

(2004), we conclude that appellant has not shown that the district court 

abused its discretion in this regard. 

Having considered appellant's arguments and concluded that 

they lack merit, we 

ORDER the judgment of conviction AFFIRMED. 

Hardesty 

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cc: Hon. Carolyn Ellsworth, District Judge 

Hofland & Tomsheck 

Attorney General/Carson City 

Clark County District Attorney 

Eighth District Court Clerk 

SUPREME COURT 

OF 

NEVADA 

(0) 1947A 

4