Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
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This compendium includes significant criminal cases by the U.S. Supreme Court & N.C. appellate courts, Nov. 2008 – Present. Selected 4th Circuit cases also are included.
Jessica Smith prepared case summaries Nov. 2008-June 4, 2019; later summaries are prepared by other School staff.
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Holding that State v. Wilkerson, 148 N.C. App. 310, rev’d per curiam, 356 N.C. 418 (2002) (bare fact of the defendant’s conviction, even if offered for a proper Rule 404(b) purpose, must be excluded under Rule 403), did not require exclusion of certified copies of the victim’s convictions. Unlike evidence of the defendant’s conviction, evidence of the victim’s convictions does not encourage the jury to acquit or convict on an improper basis.
In this Rowan County case, defendant appealed his convictions for rape of a child and additional sexual offenses with two children, arguing error in (1) admitting evidence of prior sexual abuse that was not charged, and (2) denying his motion to dismiss because the State did not produce substantial evidence of the dates of his alleged offenses against one victim. The Court of Appeals found no error.
Defendant sporadically dated, and occasionally lived with, the mother of the two victims between 2007 and 2017. In September of 2019, one victim reported sexual abuse to her pediatrician. Subsequently, the other victim reported similar allegations of sexual abuse against defendant. During trial, the State elicited testimony from one victim about abuse that occurred in Cabarrus County in an earlier time period. The victim testified that she had blocked out the specific details of the individual acts, and they were not part of the charged offenses. The trial court found this evidence was admissible to show defendant’s plan, intent, or scheme and allowed the testimony before the jury.
Taking up (1), the Court of Appeals explained that defendant challenged the admission of the testimony as erroneous under Rule of Evidence 404(b) and highly prejudicial under Rule of Evidence 403. The court first concluded that “[b]ased on the similarity of the allegations and the temporal proximity” the testimony showed a common plan or scheme by defendant. Slip Op. at 10. Looking next to the Rule 403 analysis, the court did not see abuse of discretion, noting that the trial court weighed the evidence and limited the amount of testimony in front of the jury.
Reaching (2), the court explained that “[i]n cases involving sexual assaults of children, our Supreme Court has explicitly relaxed the temporal specificity requirements that the State must allege.” Id. at 13. Here, defendant did not prove prejudice by the possible variance in the dates, and beyond asserting “that his relationship with the girls’ mother was volatile and that he frequently left the home” defendant did not present an alibi that would have been affected by the dates. Id. at 14.
In this sexual assault case involving allegations that the defendant, a high school wrestling coach, sexually assaulted wrestlers, the trial court did not abuse its discretion under Rule 403 by admitting 404(b) evidence that the defendant engaged in hazing techniques against his wrestlers. The evidence involved testimony from wrestlers that the defendant choked-out and gave extreme wedgies to his wrestlers, and engaged in a variety of hazing activity, including instructing upperclassmen to apply muscle cream to younger wrestlers’ genitals and buttocks. The evidence was “highly probative” of the defendant’s intent, plan, or scheme to carry out the charged offenses. The court noted however “that the State eventually could have run afoul of Rule 403 had it continued to spend more time at trial on the hazing testimony or had it elicited a similar amount of 404(b) testimony on ancillary, prejudicial matters that had little or no probative value regarding the Defendant’s guilt” (citing State v. Hembree, 367 N.C. 2 (2015) (new trial where in part because the trial court “allow[ed] the admission of an excessive amount” of 404(b) evidence regarding “a victim for whose murder the accused was not currently being tried”). However, the court concluded that did not occur here.