Opinion ID: 2070030
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Unrelated Incident Reference

Text: The second evidentiary ruling challenged by Middlebrook on appeal involves a police officer's testimony that he recovered a magazine for a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun from Middlebrook during the investigation of an unrelated incident. The record reflects the following exchange: Q. Would you please identify for us what State's for identification D is? A. This is a magazine for a nine millimeter semi-automatic handgun. It was recovered on the 11th of September of '96 in an unrelated incident from the one in which I investigated the 23rd of August, and it was recovered from the person  on the person which would be Mr. Middlebrook. Upon hearing that testimony, defense counsel immediately moved for a mistrial. The trial judge denied that request and instructed the jury to disregard any reference to another incident. Specifically, the jury was instructed: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is a concern that one or more of you may read something into the witness' last answer that absolutely is not there. There was a reference made to another incident, and the concern is that maybe you will think that somehow the defendant was in some other trouble and that you would draw an inference from that that he was in some other trouble, then he's perhaps more likely to be involved in this case. That is absolutely not what is involved here. You would be reading way too much into the answer and you would be wrong. There's a reference to another incident that has just no bearing on criminal matters whatsoever, and we probably are being overly cautious even by bringing this to your attention, but we also do not want to leave something hanging that one of you might have caught on. Simply ignore the reference to the other incident. It has nothing to do with any sort of criminal problem and you should make nothing of it. The law presumes that the jurors followed the Superior Court's instruction. [13] Middlebrook has not identified anything in the record to suggest otherwise. We have concluded that any possible prejudice to Middlebrook that may have been caused by the brief isolated reference to an unrelated incident was cured by the trial judge's contemporaneous and complete instruction. [14]