concluding that an expert’s characterizing his opinion as a “guess” does not render the opinion inadmissible when the term implies uncertainty instead of “mere conjecture or speculation”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that an expert’s characterizing his opinion as a “guess” does not render the opinion inadmissible when the term implies uncertainty instead of “mere conjecture or speculation”
- holding that admission of expert testimony that defendant’s wounds were self-inflicted was harmless error when two other doctors testified to essentially same opinions
- relying on the fact that the defendant killed the victim in front of several small children as one basis for finding the death sentence proportionate
- about an hour after victim’s death, defendant told police officer that victim had stabbed him; statement not admitted because defendant had time to manufacture statement and it was not made spontaneously
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Chief Justice EXUM
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s treatment of all issues in the guilt and sentencing phases of this trial.
If, in the sentencing phase, the Court were addressing the unanimity instruction issue for the first time, I would agree with defendant’s position that these instructions violate the Eighth Amendment to the federal constitution as that amendment was interpreted in Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. ---, 100 L.Ed. 2d 384 (1988), for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinions in State v. McKoy, 323 N.C. 1 , 372 S.E. 2d 12 (1988), and State v. Allen, 323 N.C. 208 , 372 S.E. 2d 855 (1988). The majority’s position on this issue is, as a result of the Court’s decisions in McKoy and Allen , the law of this state to which I am now bound. For this reason I concur with the majority’s treatment of this issue.