Court Opinion

ID: 9851266
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:09:36.602238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:52.587464
License: Public Domain

Judge John
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent and vote to award defendant a new trial based upon the reasons which follow.
First, the majority holds the trial court erred “in allowing the State to cross-examine defendant about alleged prior acts of sexual misconduct” and concerning alleged misconduct of his wife, in allowing “the State to cross-examine [defendant’s wife] about specific instances of [her] sexual misconduct,” and in permitting “the State to use extrinsic evidence” to attack the denial by defendant’s wife of sexual misconduct. It also characterizes certain statements of the prosecutor to the jury as “inappropriate” and “argumentative.” However, the majority excuses as not requiring a new trial each of the foregoing prosecutorial transgressions tolerated by the trial court. I disagree and would hold that, even assuming arguendo defendant has not shown that the prejudicial effect of any one particular error is such as to merit a new trial, see N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1443(a) (1988), the prejudicial impact of these errors considered in combination or in to to is such that defendant must receive a new trial. See State v. White, 331 N.C. 604, 616, 419 S.E.2d 557, 564 (1992) (cumulative effect of erroneously admitted evidence “deprived defendant of his fundamental right to a fair trial”).
Second, I believe the evidence of defendant’s alleged prior sexual misconduct should have been excluded and that its admission, especially in light of the errors found by the majority, constituted prejudi*19cial error requiring a new trial. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 404(b) (1992), evidence of prior offenses by a defendant is “inadmissible on the issue of guilt if its. only relevancy is to show the character of the accused or his disposition to commit an offense of the nature of the one charged . . . .” State v. Young, 317 N.C. 396, 412, 346 S.E.2d 626, 635 (1986).
The majority relies primarily on State v. Shamsid-Deen, 324 N.C. 437, 379 S.E.2d 842 (1989), in approving the testimony of Susie Barnes, Patricia Bryant, and Vickie Wright as indicative of a common scheme or plan of defendant. In Shamsid-Deen, the defendant was charged with the August 1983 rape of his approximately twenty year-old daughter. He objected to testimony that he began having intercourse with her about once a week when she was nine and almost daily as she grew older. The Court observed these acts
formed a distinct pattern of forced sexual intercourse over an eleven-year period, saving only the hiatus from April 1983 to August 1983.
Id. at 445, 379 S.E.2d at 847. As the majority points out, the Court emphasized that “a lapse of time between instances of sexual misconduct” makes the “probability of an ongoing plan more tenuous,” while similar acts “performed continuously over a period of years” serve to demonstrate “the existence of a plan.” Id. (emphasis added).
Regarding testimony by two other daughters of the defendant, the Shamsid-Deen court noted these women had also been molested by their father as they reached puberty and continuously into their adult lives, Id. at 447, 379 S.E.2d at 848, logically a period spanning about ten years. Since the defendant’s daughters were relatively close in age — twenty, twenty-seven, and twenty-nine at trial — the abuse of each must therefore have occurred in close temporal proximity to that of the others, thus reinforcing the Court’s emphasis on the constant nature of “defendant’s pattern of forcing his daughters to submit to intercourse as they reached puberty and continuing to assault them . . . into their adulthood . . . .” Id. (emphasis added).
In the case sub judice, the earliest conduct “upon which this appeal is based,” State v. Jones, 322 N.C. 585, 590, 369 S.E.2d 822, 824 (1988), was alleged to have occurred on 12 March 1990 (in case 92 CRS 2831 charging the first degree rape of L.). Susie Barnes testified about occasional sexual touching and comments by defendant in the period when she was sixteen into her early twenties, as well as about *20intercourse with defendant at age twenty-four in 1983. Thus, defendant’s last abusive contact with Barnes occurred approximately seven years before the first alleged offense sub judice.
Patricia Bryant testified that after “several months” of touching her inappropriately, defendant raped her when she “had either already [become] thirteen or was just between twelve and thirteen.” Born in 1953, Bryant would have been thirteen in 1966. The rape therefore occurred twenty-four years prior to the earliest alleged current offense.
Vickie Wright testified she had sexual intercourse with defendant “maybe once a month, every two months” for approximately two years, from 1966 to 1968, when she was fifteen to seventeen years-old. Thus, the incidents involving Wright and defendant concluded twenty-two years prior to the earliest conduct upon which defendant was brought to trial.
In Jones, 322 N.C. 585, 369 S.E.2d 822, our Supreme Court held that prior acts of sexual abuse which occurred seven years before the incidents involved in the case before the Court were too remote to be allowed into evidence as part of a common plan or scheme. The Court reasoned:
the passage of time between the commission of the two acts slowly erodes the commonality between them. The probability of an ongoing plan or scheme then becomes tenuous. Admission of other crimes at that point allows the jury to convict defendant because of the kind of person he is, rather than because the evidence discloses, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he committed the offense charged.
Id. at 590, 369 S.E.2d at 824.
The Jones court cited the earlier decision of State v. Shane, 304 N.C. 643, 285 S.E.2d 813 (1982), which found erroneous admission of evidence concerning acts committed but seven months prior to the crimes before the Court. The Shane court stated:
it is evident that the period of time elapsing between the separate sexual events plays an important part in [the] balancing process, especially when the State offers the evidence of like misconduct to show the existence of a common plan or design for defendant’s perpetration of this sort of crime.
Id. at 655, 285 S.E.2d at 820.
*21Also instructive is State v. Gross, 104 N.C. App. 97, 408 S.E.2d 531, disc. review denied, 330 N.C. 444, 412 S.E.2d 78 (1991), in which this Court found error in the admission of evidence the defendant had sexually assaulted an individual, Michael Reep, approximately seven years before the crimes alleged in the case before the Court. We held that:
[t]he passage of time between the alleged assaults upon Mr. Reep and those against the victims here is so great as to make the existence of any plan or scheme tenuous at best.
Id. at 103, 408 S.E.2d at 534.
The majority accurately points to our Supreme Court’s characterization of itself as “markedly liberal” in admitting evidence of “prior, similar sex offenses by a defendant.” See State v. Artis, 325 N.C. 278, 299, 384 S.E.2d 470, 481 (1989), vacated, 494 U.S. 1023, 108 L. Ed. 2d 604 (1990). However, that same Court has proclaimed:
The period of seven years “substantially negate[s] the plausibility of the existence of an ongoing and continuous plan to engage persistently in such deviant activities.” As such, the reasoning that gave birth to Rule 404(b) exceptions is lost.
Jones, 322 N.C. at 590, 369 S.E.2d at 824 (citation omitted).
The Jones court’s pronouncement is precisely on point with regards to the testimony of Barnes, involving an identical interval of seven years between incidents. I respectfully submit the Court’s decree also most assuredly precludes admission of evidence, as part of a common scheme or plan, of incidents separated from the instant charges by periods of twenty-two and twenty-four years.
In justifying such incidents as not being excessively remote, the majority also relies on cases in which this Court has found the length of an interval between incidents less significant when defendant had no access to the victims because, for example, defendant was incarcerated. See State v. Jacob, 113 N.C. App. 605, 439 S.E.2d 812 (1994); State v. Davis, 101 N.C. App. 12, 398 S.E.2d 645 (1990), appeal dismissed, 328 N.C. 574, 403 S.E.2d 516 (1991). I suggest that access to potential victims and the absence of evidence of abuse would, by means of converse analogy, weigh against the element of commonality. Unlike the majority, I believe the record demonstrates significant *22periods of time during which defendant had “access” to Barnes, Bryant, and Wright and during which there was no evidence of abuse.
For example, the majority concedes the record contains no evidence of sexual abuse by defendant between 1968 and 1976, but asserts “the evidence showed that defendant did not have access to Patricia [Bryant] and Vickie [Wright] during that time.” To the contrary, the record reveals that after defendant ceased having intercourse with Wright in 1968, she continued to live near him until 1972 when she separated from his son. Further, although the record suggests Bryant attempted to avoid defendant after he abused her in 1966, she did continue to spend time in his home. Finally, the record reflects that Barnes lived near defendant in a trailer owned by him from approximately 1983 until 1993. Nonetheless, the rape of Barnes was described as occurring in 1983 and no other evidence of similar conduct towards Barnes by defendant was introduced. The necessary element of commonality regarding Barnes’ testimony is thus further negated. See Jacobs, 113 N.C. App. at 611, 439 S.E.2d at 815 (Where defendant had “almost no access” to victims of earlier conduct following divorce, the Court noted, “[t]he remoteness factor must be examined carefully to determine whether the plan or scheme of molestation was interrupted or ceased due to underlying circumstances, and then resumed in a continual fashion.”).
In sum, I believe the evidence of incidents allegedly involving defendant and Barnes, Bryant and Wright was too remote and that “its probative impact [was] so attenuated by time that it [became] little more than character evidence illustrating the predisposition of the accused.” Jones, 322 N.C. at 590, 369 S.E.2d at 825. It therefore was not admissible under Rule 404(b) to demonstrate a common scheme or plan of defendant. Moreover, the extensive lapse of time between each incident and those for which defendant was on trial created the substantial likelihood “of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury,” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 403 (1992), so as at a minimum to necessitate exclusion of the evidence under Rule 403.
Finally, the prejudicial effect of Bryant’s testimony regarding defendant was amplified by her also being allowed to relate over his objection that, before ever meeting defendant, she had been sexually molested by her grandmother’s common-law husband and by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. Bryant testified graphically about this abuse, including recounting an instance of being sodomized while pinned in a stand used to milk goats. These incidents, while indis*23putably reprehensible and traumatic to Bryant, were irrelevant to the charges against defendant and should have been excluded. See State v. Coen, 78 N.C.App. 778, 780-781, 338 S.E.2d 784, 786, appeal dismissed, 317 N.C. 709, 347 S.E.2d 444 (1986) (“If the proffered evidence has no tendency to prove a fact in issue in the case, the evidence is irrelevant and must be excluded.”). Even assuming arguendo this testimony met the test of relevance, it should have been excluded under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 403 (1992) in view of the great potential for prejudice. See State v. Hamilton, 77 N.C.App. 506, 335 S.E.2d 506 (1985), disc. review denied, 315 N.C. 593, 341 S.E.2d 33 (1986) (relevant evidence may be excluded if probative value substantially outweighed by inflammatory effect).