Court Opinion

ID: 9616327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:45:42.713289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:55.564836
License: Public Domain

Judge BECTON
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s resolution of all issues in this case except the issue involving the trial judge’s refusal to grant a mistrial when Detective Landers told the jury that an informant told him that the defendant was selling narcotics. Few activities deserve the uniform and national consternation that drug selling deserves. It naturally, and even rightfully, tugs at the heart strings of jurors. Indeed, some jurors may be swayed to convict by the mere suggestion that one deals in drugs. But the spectre of an alleged drug seller escaping punishment or being retried should not make courts waiver from their unflagging duty of ensuring every defendant a fair trial. In my view, testimony in this drug possession case that defendant was a drug seller was reversibly prejudicial and I dissent.
In State v Aycoth the defendant claimed prejudice on the grounds that a deputy sheriff testified that he knew that the defendant owned the automobile involved in the robbery case being tried because the defendant “at an earlier date said it was his car when [he was] arrested ... on another charge . . . when he was indicted for murder.” 270 N.C. 270, 272, 154 S.E.2d 59, 60 (1979). The trial judge in Aycoth gave a curative instruction, directing the jury to disregard the statements of the deputy sheriff. However, our Supreme Court found that “... the court’s instruction did not remove from the minds of the jurors the prejudicial effect of the knowledge they had acquired from [the deputy sheriff’s] testimony that Aycoth had been or was under indictment for murder.” Id. at 273, 154 S.E.2d at 61.
“In appraising the effect of incompetent evidence once admitted and afterwards withdrawn, the court will look to the nature of the evidence and its probable influence upon the minds of the jury in reaching a verdict.” State v. Strickland, 229 N.C. 201, 207, 49 S.E.2d 469, 473 (1948). The statement in the case before us, like that in Aycoth, was of a nature such that the court’s instruction did not remove from the minds of the jurors the “prejudicial effect of the knowledge they had acquired” from Landers’ testimony that Davis was selling narcotics. Significantly, the jury knew that the informant’s other statements had been proven to be true. Indeed, before uttering the challenged hearsay statement, Detective Landers *266testified: “After I received the information, I responded to the area where the information was based on, [sic] and to verify that the information that I received was true and accurate information.” The white van described by the informant was found where the informant said it would be. Baking soda, twist ties, a measuring spoon, and a broken glass vial, among other things, were found in the described van. The defendant, himself, fit the exact description given by the informant. Further, the defendant was found with another man exactly where the informant said they could be found. The knowledge that all the informant’s previous statements were verified had its “probable influence upon the minds of the jury” and presented the “obvious difficulty [of] erasing it from [the] jury’s mind.” Id. Equally significant, the testimony of Detective Landers that he had been with the Greensboro Police Department for “almost seven years” and had been in the vice and narcotics division for “a little over two years” cast doubts on the possibility that the challenged statement — “the subject was selling narcotics”— was a “slip of the tongue” or the opinion of a recently-graduated officer. Indeed, the trial judge had just sustained objections to the two preceding questions, one of which solicited a hearsay response. Detective Landers had every reason to know that the hearsay testimony — that the defendant was selling narcotics — would be prejudicial in this narcotics possession case. I therefore believe the trial court erred by failing to grant Davis’ motion for a mistrial.