Court Opinion

ID: 9758520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:34:19.941549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:52.534349
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
While I join in that part of the court’s opinion reversing appellant’s conviction for murder in the first degree, I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which would require a party to object twice in order to avoid Clair's waiver rule.
When the trial court admitted into evidence a conversation between the victim and one of the co-conspirators, appellant objected to the evidence as hearsay. Assuming the evidence was admitted not for the truth of the matter asserted but to show motive, the defendant was entitled, as the majority concedes, to a limiting instruction.
The trial court concluded, over objection, that it would be more prudent to wait and give the limiting instruction after all the evidence had been presented, and informed the defendant that it would “analyze thoroughly in its general *386charge” the purpose for which the evidence was admitted. Through what the majority terms “oversight,” no limiting instruction was even given. Despite the fact the defendant timely objected to the admission of this evidence, and objected to the trial court’s procedure of giving the instruction at a later time, the majority holds that appellant waived the issue under Clair for not again objecting at the close of the court’s general charge. In my view, appellant preserved this issue for review when he objected to the admission of the evidence at the time it was admitted; I would not extend Clair to require an objection at the time the evidence is admitted and at the close of the court’s charge to the jury. Today’s decision is especially harsh when, as here, the trial judge disposed of an objection by promising to give , an instruction at a later time and then does not do so. The purpose of Clair is to alert the trial court to possible errors to enable the court to correct those errors. Clair should not be invoked when a party failed to remind the trial court that the trial court has already been once alerted to a possible error.