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

In this capital case, the court held that the cumulative effect of several errors at trial denied the defendant a fair trial; the court vacated the conviction and sentence and remanded for a new trial. Specifically, and as discussed in more detail in the summaries that follow, the trial court erred by admitting an excessive amount of 404(b) evidence pertaining to another murder; by admitting evidence of the 404(b) murder victim’s good character; and by allowing the prosecution to argue without basis to the jury that defense counsel had in effect suborned perjury.