Court Opinion

ID: 9566821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:43:41.419657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:21.203040
License: Public Domain

Justice Huskins
dissenting.
When a defendant is in custody under circumstances requiring the custodial officers to advise him of his constitutional rights as mandated in Miranda, v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 16 L.Ed. 2d 694, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (1966), evidence of silence as an admission of guilt is clearly inadmissible. I regard decisions of this Court on “in-custody silence” prior to Miranda as no longer authoritative. I therefore fully agree with the majority opinion that the challenged testimony in this case was erroneously admitted. Even so, I share the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals that its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the evidentiary setting of this case, I see no reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to defendant’s conviction. Edith Elaine Crisco testified from the witness stand that she was with defendant and one Phillip Scearcy in Scearcy’s car on the night Pearl Walker was murdered; that she parked the car on a road near the victim’s house and defendant left the car and entered the house carrying a sawed-off shotgun; that she heard a woman say, “Lord, have mercy on me,” and shortly thereafter heard a shotgun blast; that defendant came out of the house with the sawed-off shotgun, and reentered the car with her and Scearcy. The pathologist who examined the body of Pearl Walker approximately twelve hours later removed pellets and wadding from a shotgun wound in the victim’s neck. It is undenied that a shotgun wound was the cause of death.
*294Brenda Leasor testified from the witness stand that one week before the murder defendant told her “they knew where some money was and they were going to get it”; that on the day following the murder defendant told her “they had done the job”; that he had to shoot “the old Negro woman” because “Phillip [Scearcy] had called his name and that Phillip said he would have to shoot her or she would be able to identify them.” S.B.I. Agent Richardson testified that statements made to him by Brenda Leasor in his investigation of the crime were in substantial accord with her testimony.
In the face of such damning evidence, it is unrealistic in my view to award a new trial because S.B.I. Agent Barrier was erroneously allowed to testify that he talked to Elaine Crisco in the presence of this defendant two weeks after the murder and that she made statements substantially in accord with the very things she swore at the trial and defendant made no denial but remained silent. In some cases, and this is one of them, the properly admitted evidence of guilt is so overwhelming, and the prejudicial effect of the improperly admitted evidence is so insignificant by comparison, that it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the improperly used evidence did not contribute to the conviction and was therefore harmless error. Schneble v. Florida,, 405 U.S. 427, 31 L.Ed. 2d 340, 92 S.Ct. 1056 (1972) ; Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 17 L.Ed. 2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824 (1967) ; Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 11 L.Ed. 2d 171, 84 S.Ct. 229 (1963). In my judgment, the minds of an average jury would not have found the State’s case significantly less persuasive had Barrier’s incompetent testimony been excluded. In the language of Mr. Justice Douglas in Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 23 L.Ed. 2d 284, 89 S.Ct. 1726 (1969), the evidence of guilt “is so overwhelming that unless we say that no violation of Bruton can constitute harmless error, we must leave this . . . conviction undisturbed.” In the Harrington case the constitutional error consisted of the admission in evidence at Harrington’s trial of a confession by a codefendant who did not testify, implicating Harrington. Since the evidence supplied through the erroneously admitted confession was merely cumulative and other evidence of Harrington’s guilt was overwhelming, as here, it was held that admission of the codefend-ant’s confession was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. To like effect is Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371, 33 L.Ed. 2d 1, 92 S.Ct. 2174 (1974).
*295Consistent decisions of this Court, holding that admission of technically incompetent evidence is harmless unless it is made to appear that defendant was prejudiced thereby and that a different result likely would have ensued had the evidence been excluded, include State v. Taylor, 280 N.C. 273, 185 S.E. 2d 677 (1972) ; State v. Barbour, 278 N.C. 449, 180 S.E. 2d 115 (1971) ; State v. Swaney, 277 N.C. 602, 178 S.E. 2d 399 (1971) ; State v. Williams, 275 N.C. 77, 165 S.E. 2d 481 (1969). “Verdicts and judgments are not to be lightly set aside, nor for any improper ruling which did not materially and adversely affect the result of the trial.” State v. Bovender, 233 N.C. 683, 65 S.E. 2d 323 (1951).
Every defendant is “entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.” Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 97 L.Ed. 593, 73 S.Ct. 481 (1953). I think this defendant had a fair trial and that the error complained of was harmless. The verdict itself is some evidence of that fact since, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of first degree murder, he was only convicted of murder in the second degree. I vote to uphold the verdict and judgment and respectfully dissent from the majority opinion awarding a new trial.