Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
State v. Waddell, 239 N.C. App. 202 (Feb. 3, 2015)
In this felony indecent exposure case where the defendant exposed himself to a 14-year old boy, his mother and grandmother, the trial court did not err by admitting 404(b) evidence from two adult women who testified that the defendant exposed himself in public on other occasions. The court rejected the defendant’s argument that the other acts were insufficiently similar to the charged conduct and only “generic features of the charge of indecent exposure,” noting that the 404(b) testimony revealed that the defendant exposed himself to adult women, who were either alone or in pairs, in or in the vicinity of businesses near the courthouse in downtown Fayetteville, and each instance involved the defendant exposing his genitals with his hand on or under his penis. The court also rejected the defendant’s argument that because the current charge was elevated because the exposure occurred in the presence of a child under 16 and the prior incidents involved adult women, the were not sufficiently similar, noting that the defendant acknowledged in his brief that in this case he did in fact expose himself to an adult woman as well. The court also rejected the defendant’s argument that the evidence should have been excluded under the Rule 403 balancing test.