Court Opinion

ID: 9576332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:23:18.112125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:44.178938
License: Public Domain

*59Justice Martin
dissenting.
Believing as I do that no prejudicial error occurred in defendant’s trial, I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that prejudicial error occurred when the state’s witness answered the one question to which defendant belatedly objected and then moved to strike the answer. This answer in effect stated that Mr. Satterfield, defendant’s father, showed the officers a chest of drawers in the house where the knife was supposedly kept.
This testimony must be considered in the light of the other evidence in determining if error was committed by the trial judge in denying the motion to strike. The state had already introduced evidence without objection that defendant told Mrs. Dill, the victim, that the knife which he used to threaten her during the robbery and rape belonged to his father and that he was going to carry it back home and put it back in the drawer. Further, immediately after the challenged testimony, the officer testified without objection: “The top drawer of the chest of drawers was pulled open, and there was no knife located in the drawer.”
This Court has long held that where evidence is admitted over objection, but evidence of the same import has theretofore or thereafter been admitted without objection, the benefit of the objection is lost. State v. Maccia, 311 N.C. 222, 316 S.E. 2d 241 (1984); State v. Murray, 310 N.C. 541, 313 S.E. 2d 523 (1984); State v. Corbett, 307 N.C. 169, 297 S.E. 2d 553 (1982); 1 Brandis on North Carolina Evidence § 30 (1982). This rule applies to the facts of this case.
The majority relies upon State v. Suits, 296 N.C. 553, 251 S.E. 2d 607 (1979). However, Suits involved a wife’s testimony being used against her husband. The testimony was incompetent because of the statute, and there was no waiver of the objection by the admission of similar unobjected-to testimony. This appeal is not affected by a statutory prohibition of evidence as occurred in Suits.
Even assuming that any error was not lost by defendant, the testimony in my view was not prejudicial error. There is just no reasonable possibility that absent the challenged testimony a different result would have been reached. State v. Powell, 306 N.C. 718, 295 S.E. 2d 413 (1982); N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a) (1985). The *60state’s evidence was strong and direct. Mrs. Dill, a sixty-seven-year-old black woman, had known the defendant for years; her children had gone to school with him. Defendant, thirty-four years old, made no effort to disguise his appearance. Defendant does not contend that a knife was not used in the assault upon Mrs. Dill; he relies entirely upon alibi, saying that he was with his girlfriend until she went to work; he then drank beer and wine with his friend Buck. He denied that he saw Mrs. Dill at all on the day in question.
I find that defendant had a fair trial, free of prejudicial error.