Court Opinion

ID: 9587005
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:17:15.268699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:58.784994
License: Public Domain

Judge Becton
dissenting.
Believing that the trial court’s failure to summarize defendant’s evidence affected defendant’s substantial rights under State v. Best, 265 N.C. 477, 144 S.E. 2d 416 (1965), and was plain error under State v. Odom, 307 N.C. 655, 300 S.E. 2d 375 (1983), I dissent.
Only when the evidence is simple and direct and without equivocation and complication is the failure to summarize any evidence harmless error. State v. Best. In my view, the evidence presented at defendant’s trial was far from unequivocal. The State relied almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, the implications of which were often ambiguous.
The prosecuting witness awoke to discover an intruder astraddle her as she lay on her side in the bed in her dark bedroom. When the intruder threatened her with a knife, she grabbed the blade of the knife, pushed it away, and screamed. The intruder yanked back the knife, cutting her hand, and fled through. an open window. Although the prosecuting witness at trial described the intruder as dark and muscular with short hair, wearing something white on the upper part of his body, the prosecuting witness admitted on cross-examination that she had made two prior statements to the police in which she stated that the only thing she had observed about the intruder was that he appeared to be wearing a short-sleeved white shirt. She also admitted that she had previously failed to identify the defendant as the person who had been in her room that night. The only other direct evidence offered by the State on the issue of identity came from Ed Towler, who testified that he overheard defendant admitting involvement in a crime very similar to the one at issue in this case. Towler then testified that he immediately entered his *466house and spoke with his daughter, who was living with him at that time. Significantly, Towler’s daughter testified that she had not, as her father testified, been living with him on the night in question. Although evidence relating to four items of physical evidence (hair, fingerprints, knife, and fiber) was presented, S.B.I. agent Troy Hamlin could only testify that he received a “negroid hair fragment”; detective Larry Carter testified that the fingerprints did not match the defendant’s, that no blood residue was found on the knife, and that the fiber from the window and from the socks were both light blue acrylic fibers that could have originated from the same source.
Given the defendant’s alibi testimony, the testimony of several of his witnesses that they had never seen defendant with a towel like the one offered in evidence by the State, and the testimony of Ed Towler’s daughter, among other things, I cannot say that the failure to summarize defendant’s evidence had no probable impact on the jury’s finding of guilt.