Court Opinion

ID: 9591667
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:06:28.538442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:11.254298
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTIN
concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion. However, with respect to the impeachment issue, I find that the cross-examination of defendant was competent and admissible for the purpose of impeaching defendant’s credibility. State v. Gurley, 283 N.C. 541, *171196 S.E. 2d 725 (1973), controls this issue. In Gurley, evidence of defendant’s possession of, familiarity with, and interest in pornographic magazines and photographs of nude women (defendant made one of the photographs) was held competent for the purpose of impeachment. Gurley has been cited as authority to impeach a defendant by questions on cross-examination about his possession of, familiarity with, and interest in pornographic magazines in 4 Strong’s N.C. Index 3d Criminal Law § 86.5 (1976) and 1 Brandis on North Carolina Evidence § 111 (1982). The bench and bar rely upon these texts. No other citations of Gurley have been discovered in my research. I see no distinction between pornographic magazines and pornographic movies that would take this case outside the holding in Gurley.
If the Court were writing upon a clean slate, the wisdom of adopting the reasoning in Gurley would be the subject of vigorous debate. Whenever a court leaves the well-defined path of determining legal questions and undertakes to define moral issues, it embarks upon a journey through a Serbonian bog.
This Court has not overruled Gurley. So long as Gurley stands, we are bound thereby.
Chief Justice Branch joins in this concurring opinion.