Court Opinion

ID: 9646575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:03:23.792748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:39.515874
License: Public Domain

GARRITY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s opinion that the trial court’s refusal to allow defense counsel to cross-examine Earl Frazier about the quantities of drugs and alcohol he had consumed prior to the incident was prejudicial error.
The appellant was convicted of assault and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence.
The record reflects Lottie Graves’s testimony that in the early morning hours of August 19, 1984, she, Earl Frazier, the appellant and two other men were in her apartment. One of the men had a gun which eventually came into the possession of the appellant. The appellant asked Graves if she performed fellatio. When she replied that she did not, Matthews struck her across her face with the gun.
Tina Wright, a neighbor of Ms. Graves at the time of the incident, testified for the defense. Wright stated that on August 19, 1984, at approximately 2:30 a.m. Graves knocked on her apartment door. Wright observed that Graves was crying and appeared to be upset. “She was *306holding her hand up here. There was a big gash from this side of her eye to the other end.”
Officer Walter Sallee testified that in the afternoon of August 19, he had the opportunity to interview Graves at Union Memorial Hospital. At that time he observed that she was nervous and had a laceration across her forehead.
Earl Frazier testified that Graves “had a cut up here between her nose, somewhere here about her eyes.” He further testified that the appellant had a gun.
The Court of Appeals, in Dorsey v. State, 276 Md. 638, 350 A.2d 655 (1976), set forth the following test for use in determining when a lower court has committed reversible error.
[W]hen an appellant, in a criminal case, establishes error, unless a reviewing court, upon its own independent review of the record, is able to declare a belief, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the error in any way influenced the verdict, such error cannot be deemed “harmless” and a reversal is mandated. Such reviewing court must thus be satisfied that there is no reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of—whether erroneously admitted or excluded—may have contributed to the rendition of the guilty verdict.
Id. at 659, 350 A.2d 655.
Applying this test to the facts in this case, I am persuaded that regardless of the extent of Frazier’s intoxication from alcohol and narcotics, there was sufficient other testimony which supported Graves’s allegation of injuries. A review of the record convinces me that Frazier’s testimony was merely cumulative and that had he not testified there would have remained sufficient evidence to support Matthews’s conviction. While I believe it was error for the court to deny cross-examination into the extent of Frazier’s intoxication, I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the exclusion of such evidence did not in any way influence the verdict and, therefore, was harmless error.