In this first-degree murder and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle in operation case, the Court of Appeals determined that the trial court did not commit reversible error on evidentiary issues and that there was no cumulative error.  Defendant was jealous of Demesha Warren’s relationship with the victim, Kenneth Covington, and fatally shot Covington while Covington was driving Warren’s car after visiting the store on an evening when he and Warren were watching TV together at her apartment.

(1) Because certain prior statements made by Warren to an investigator correctly reflected her knowledge at the time she made them, the trial court did not err by admitting the statements as past recorded recollections under Rule 803(5).  One statement was recorded by the investigator on the night of the murder and the other was an email Warren later provided to the investigator.  At trial, Warren remembered speaking with the investigator on the night of the murder and giving him the email but could not remember the content of either communication because of trauma-induced memory loss.  While Warren did not testify that the content of the recording correctly reflected her knowledge at the time, she did not disavow it and characterized the content as “what [she] had been through” and “just laying it all out.”  This was sufficient for the Court to conclude that Warren was relaying information that reflected her knowledge correctly.  As for the email, evidence suggesting that Warren dictated the email and signed and dated it when providing it to the investigator was sufficient to show that it correctly reflected her knowledge at the time.

(2) The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting testimony of the State’s expert on gunshot residue (GSR) because the expert followed the State Crime Lab’s procedures as required to meet the reliability requirement of Rule 702(a).  The defendant argued that the expert did not follow Lab protocol because the expert analyzed a GSR sample taken from the defendant more than four hours after the shooting.  The trial court found, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the expert actually did follow Lab protocol which permits a sample to be tested beyond the four-hour time limit when the associated GSR information form indicates that collection was delayed because the person from whom the sample was collected was sleeping during the four-hour time window, as was the case here.  The Court determined that the defendant failed to preserve another Rule 702(a) argument related to threshold amounts of GSR elements. 

(3) The trial court did not abuse its discretion by allowing an investigator to provide lay opinion testimony identifying a car in a surveillance video as the defendant’s car based on its color and sunroof.  The Court of Appeals explained that it was unnecessary for the investigator to have firsthand knowledge of the events depicted in the videos to provide the lay opinion identification.  Rather, in order to offer an interpretation of the similarities between the depicted car and the defendant’s car, the investigator needed to have firsthand knowledge of the defendant’s car, which he did because he had viewed and examined the car following the shooting.

(4) The trial court erred by admitting testimony from a witness concerning statements Warren had made to the witness describing the defendant confronting Warren about her relationship with the victim and Warren’s belief that the defendant had killed the victim.  The trial court admitted the testimony of those statements as non-hearsay corroboration of Warren’s testimony, but this was error because the statements were inconsistent with and contradicted Warren’s testimony.  While error, admission of the statements was not prejudicial because the jury heard other admissible evidence that was consistent with the erroneously admitted statements.

(5) The trial court did not err by admitting a witness’s testimony recounting the victim’s statement to the witness that the victim was afraid of the defendant because the defendant had threatened to kill him as a statement of the victim’s then-existing state of mind under Rule 803(3).  The fact of the threat explained the victim’s fear and, thus, the statement was “precisely the type of statement by a murder victim expressing fear of the defendant that our Supreme Court has long held admissible under Rule 803(3).”

(6) The trial court erred by admitting evidence that an investigator recovered a .45 caliber bullet from the defendant’s car because the bullet had no connection to the murder, which involved .40 caliber bullets, and therefore was irrelevant under Rules 401 and 402.  However, this error did not amount to prejudicial plain error because it “did not draw any connection between Defendant and guns that had not already been drawn.”

(7) Finally, the Court rejected the defendant’s contention that the cumulative effect of the individual errors required a new trial, explaining that “the errors individually had, at most, a miniscule impact on the trial” because the facts underlying the erroneously admitted evidence came in through other means and there was extensive other evidence implicating the defendant in the murder.

The defendant was convicted after a jury trial of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and other serious felony charges after he shot and killed his former girlfriend and then pistol-whipped and fired a gun at another woman, a registered nurse. The defendant argued that the trial court erred by allowing lay testimony on the defendant’s mental capacity from his second victim, a registered nurse. She answered questions from the State on how the defendant compared to “psych patients” she had dealt with, on whether the defendant was able to process his thoughts, and on whether he was in touch with reality. Though a lay witness may not offer a specific psychiatric diagnosis, the Court of Appeals—reviewing the issue for abuse of discretion—concluded in light of the evidence against the defendant that there was no reasonable possibility that the result of his trial would have been different if the trial court had excluded the testimony.

In this murder and possession of a firearm by a felon case, the trial court did not commit plain error by allowing the admission of an investigator’s testimony concerning the defendant’s demeanor. At trial, the investigator, who had interviewed the defendant, was asked to clarify why he thought that the defendant’s earlier statement didn’t “add up.” The investigator noted the defendant’s demeanor testifying, among other things, that the defendant did not express emotion when talking about his wife’s alleged suicide. The court rejected the defendant’s argument that the statements constituted impermissible lay opinions under Rule 701. Rather, it concluded that in context, the investigator was simply explaining the steps he took in his ongoing investigation; his statements expressing skepticism over the defendant’s account served merely to provide context explaining his rationale for subjecting the defendant to further scrutiny. The court further rejected the defendant’s argument that the investigator’s testimony regarding certain text messages sent from the victim’s phone also constituted improper lay opinion testimony. The investigator examined these messages to determine whether the victim’s death was a suicide. Like the investigator’s other testimony, this testimony provided context for his decision-making regarding the investigation; his testimony explained why he conducted a homicide investigation rather than concluding that the victim’s death was a suicide. Regarding the investigator’s testimony that the defendant “was deceptive,” the court concluded that because the statements were elicited by the defense on cross examination the invited error doctrine applied.

In this felony child abuse case, the trial court did not commit plain error by admitting testimony from an investigating detective that the existence of the victim’s hairs in a hole in the wall of the home where the incident occurred was inconsistent with defendant’s account of the incident, that he punched the wall when he had difficulty communicating with a 911 operator. The detective’s testimony did not invade the province of the jury by commenting on the truthfulness of defendant’s statements and subsequent testimony. Rather, the court reasoned, the detective was explaining the investigative process that led officers to return to the home and collect the hair sample (later determined to match the victim). Contrary to defendant’s arguments, testimony that the hair embedded in the wall was inconsistent with defendant’s version of the incident was not an impermissible statement that defendant was not telling the truth. The detective’s testimony served to provide the jury a clear understanding of why the officers returned to the home after their initial investigation and how officers came to discover the hair and request forensic testing of that evidence. It concluded: “these statements were rationally based on [the officer’s] experience as a detective and were helpful to the jury in understanding the investigative process in this case.”

In a murder case, the trial court did not err by excluding testimony of Susan Strain, a licensed social worker. Strain worked with the defendant’s step-father for several years and testified that she occasionally saw the defendant in the lobby of the facility where she worked. The State objected to Strain’s proffered testimony that on one occasion the defendant “appeared noticeably depressed with flat affect.” The trial court allowed Strain to testify to her observation of the defendant, but did not permit her to make a diagnosis of depression based upon her brief observations of the defendant some time ago. The defendant tendered Strain as a lay witness and made no attempt to qualify her as an expert; her opinion thus was limited to the defendant’s emotional state and she could not testify concerning a specific psychiatric diagnosis. The statement that the defendant “appeared noticeably depressed with flat affect” is more comparable to a specific psychiatric diagnosis than to a lay opinion of an emotional state. Furthermore Strain lacked personal knowledge because she only saw the defendant on occasion in the lobby, her observations occurred seven years before to the murder, she did not spend any appreciable amount of time with him, and the defendant did not present any evidence to indicate Strain had personal knowledge of his mental state at that time.

No plain error occurred when the trial court allowed a detective to give lay opinion testimony that items were purchased with a stolen credit card and it looked like someone had tried to hide them; subtotals on a store receipt indicated that the credit card was stolen; blood was present on clothing and in a car; and a broken wood panel piece matched a break at the entry site. Some testimony was proper on grounds that an officer may give lay opinion testimony based on investigative training. Other testimony was nothing more than an instantaneous conclusion reached by the detective. Finally, the Supreme Court of North Carolina has upheld lay opinion testimony identifying blood or bloodstains.