State v. McElrath

Justice MITCHELL

dissenting.

I dissent from that part of the opinion of the majority holding that the trial court committed prejudicial error by excluding a drawing found in the victim’s home among his personal effects and from the result reached by the majority. I believe the trial court properly excluded the drawing.

We have held that:

A defendant may introduce evidence tending to show that someone other than defendant committed the crime charged, but such evidence is inadmissible unless it points directly to the guilt of the third party. Evidence which does no mpre than create an inference or conjecture as to another’s guilt is inadmissible. State v. Stanfield, 292 N.C. 357 , 233 S.E. 2d 574 (1977); State v. Jenkins, 292 N.C. 179 , 232 S.E. 2d 648 (1977); State v. Shinn, 238 N.C. 535 , 78 S.E. 2d 388 (1953); State v. Smith, 211 N.C. 93 , 189 S.E. 175 (1937). ‘[T]he admissibility of another person’s guilt now seems to be governed, as it should be, by the general principle of relevancy under which the evidence will be admitted unless in the particular case it appears to have no substantial probative value.’ 1 Stansbury’s N.C. Evidence § 93 at 302-03 (Brandis rev. 1973).

State v. Hamlette, 302 N.C. 490, 501 , 276 S.E. 2d 338, 346 (1981). I see no reason to believe this rule has been altered by the adoption of Chapter 8C of our General Statutes, the North Carolina Rules of Evidence. I do not agree with the majority that the drawing constituted a “possible alternative explanation for the victim’s unfortunate demise and thereby cast crucial doubt upon the State’s theory of the case.” The drawing has absolutely no tendency to implicate any person other than the victim in anything. Even viewing the drawing in the light most favorable *21 to the defendant, it can only be said at most to give rise to speculation or conjecture of a type which until now has not been viewed as sufficient to render evidence either relevant or admissible.

The majority’s discussion of this issue reveals on its face the extreme speculation and conjecture which must be employed in order to warp this evidence to fit our rules. The majority says that the drawing indicates that the victim “may” have planned a robbery of the defendant’s North Carolina home. The majority then speculates that the victim “may” have shared those possible plans with one or more co-conspirators. The majority then concludes that such speculation stacked upon conjecture could lead a jury to find a “possible” alternative explanation for the victim’s death. It seems clear to me that the drawing should have been excluded from evidence because it neither tended to exculpate the defendant nor inculpate any other person. See State v. Rogers, 316 N.C. 203 , 341 S.E. 2d 713 (1986); State v. Gaines, 283 N.C. 33 , 194 S.E. 2d 839 (1973).

Even if it is assumed — erroneously in my view — that the drawing found among the personal effects of the victim was admissible, I do not believe the defendant has carried his burden of showing a “reasonable possibility that, had the error in question not been committed, a different result would have been reached at trial . . . .” N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a) (1983). From substantial evidence introduced at trial, the jury could and apparently did believe that the victim — or more accurately a large part of him— was taken away from the defendant’s home by the defendant in his car trunk after the defendant had murdered and butchered the victim. The evidence of the defendant’s activities at his home at about the time the murder must have occurred was more than sufficient to permit the jury to find that the defendant killed the victim there, then cut off his head and hands to prevent identification of the body before dumping it beside the highway. The evidence was also sufficient to support a reasonable jury finding that the defendant then returned to his home in North Carolina and, before hiding the car used to transport the body, drilled holes in the trunk and washed it out in a nearly successful effort to remove all evidence of bloodstains.

Substantial evidence tended to show that the defendant murdered and butchered the victim in the defendant’s home before *22 dumping his body by the side of the road. Even if one were inclined to join the majority in its pure speculation and conjecture that the victim planned to rob the defendant’s home, this would be one more piece of evidence tending to indicate that the victim was in the home at the time he was murdered and his dismembered body removed from the home by the defendant in the defendant’s car. The possibility that some phantom “others” may have been present in the defendant’s home with the victim is the sheerest speculation and conjecture not supported by either substantial or insubstantial evidence.

For the foregoing reasons, I dissent from the result reached by the majority and vote to find no error in the trial of this case.

Justices MARTIN and Frye join in this dissenting opinion.