# State v. Fullwood

> Supreme Court of North Carolina · November 3, 1988 · 323 N.C. 371

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9590379

## Case

- **Full name:** State of North Carolina v. Michael Lee Fullwood
- **Court:** Supreme Court of North Carolina
- **Decided:** November 3, 1988
- **Citations:** 323 N.C. 371; 373 S.E.2d 518; 1988 N.C. LEXIS 622
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Exum
- **Judges:** Whichard, Exum, Frye
- **Cited by:** 68 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Vacated by Fullwood v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 1022 (1990).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9590379

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9590379. Public record. Not legal advice.