State v. Hembree, 368 N.C. 2 (Apr. 10, 2015)

In this capital murder case, the trial court erred by admitting an excessive amount of 404(b) evidence pertaining to the murder of another victim, Saldana. The court began by concluding that the trial court properly admitted evidence of the Saldana murder under Rule 404(b) to show common plan or design. However, the trial court abused its discretion under Rule 403 by admitting “so much” 404(b) evidence given the differences between the two deaths and the lack of connection between them, the uncertainty regarding the cause of the victim’s death, and the nature and extent of the 404(b) evidence (among other things, of the 8 days used by the State to present its case, 7 were spent on the 404(b) evidence; also, the jury viewed over a dozen photographs of Saldana’s burned remains). The court stated: “Our review has uncovered no North Carolina case in which it is clear that the State relied so extensively, both in its case-in-chief and in rebuttal, on Rule 404(b) evidence about a victim for whose murder the accused was not currently being tried.”