State v. Patterson

648 S.E.2d 250, 185 N.C. App. 67, 2007 N.C. App. LEXIS 1733
Court of Appeals of North Carolina·Decided August 7, 2007·No. COA06-1347·Published·Cited by 13 cases

Opinions

CALABRIA, Judge.

Mark N. Patterson (“defendant”) appeals from judgments entered upon jury verdicts finding him guilty of possession of stolen property pursuant to a breaking or entering and possession of implements of house breaking. We find no error.

On 2 November 2005, Tonya Sellers (“Sellers”) reported for work at Four-Square Community Action Head Start (“Head Start”) and noticed that someone had broken into a room in the Head Start office. “One of the file cabinets was messed up, some money was missing from the extended day room, and we had a camera that was missing,” Sellers testified. Sellers identified the missing camera as a silver colored Kodak Easy-Show digital camera that was kept in a white pack with a USB cord. Sellers reported the break-in and theft to the police, speaking with James Jones (“Detective James Jones”), a detective with the Graham County Sheriff’s Department.

[69] Three weeks later, on 22 November 2005, Detective James Jones received a call from Kyle Boring (“Boring”), a Graham County resident. Boring informed Detective James Jones that he allowed defendant to store property inside a camper trailer on Boring’s premises and that he believed some of the property inside the trailer may be items the police were seeking. Following Boring’s tip, Detective James Jones sent Brian Jones (“Detective Brian Jones”), also with the Graham County Sheriff’s Department, to search for the stolen property.

With Boring’s consent, Detective Brian Jones searched the trailer and found several black bags containing items including papers with defendant’s name on them. He also found a camera matching the description of the digital camera Sellers reported stolen. At trial, Sellers testified that the camera found in the trailer was the same as the one taken from Head Start.

Detective Brian Jones also found a set of bolt cutters and other tools, which he characterized as a “homemade lock-picking kit.” Detective Brian Jones testified that such items were typically used for breaking and entering buildings. In addition to the camera found in the trailer, Detective Brian Jones found a camcorder. Noah Crowe (“Pastor Crowe”), pastor of the First Baptist Church in Robbinsville, testified that the camcorder found in the trailer was one that had been stolen from his church.

Defendant testified that the camera, camcorder, and alleged burglary tools belonged to him. He stated the tools were not burglary tools, but were used for other purposes such as his job as a plumber. Following his trial in Graham County Superior Court, the jury returned guilty verdicts. Judge Zoro J. Guice, Jr. sentenced defendant to a minimum of 10 months and a maximum of 12 months in the North Carolina Department of Correction for possession of property stolen pursuant to a breaking or entering and a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 8 months for possession of implements of house breaking. Judge Guice suspended the sentence for possession of implements of house breaking and placed defendant on supervised probation for a period of five years. From those judgments, defendant appeals.

Defendant initially argues the trial court erred by admitting Detective Brian Jones’ statements regarding other businesses that had reported break-ins. Defendant contends that the admission of [70] such statements over his objection was improper in that the statements were hearsay, speculative, irrelevant, and unduly prejudicial. We disagree.

We first note that relevant evidence is “evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 401 (2005). Hearsay is defined as “a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 801 (2005).

The relevant exchange in the record was as follows:

[Detective Brian Jones]: With the items I then — after finding what was missing, first of all I put them in a safe place in our evidence room. Then we started going through reports. Then I loaded several items on the back of a pickup truck, which belongs to the sheriffs department. I then went to local businesses that had reported break-ins and stolen merchandise[.]
[Defense counsel]: Objection, Your Honor, to what somebody might have said.
The Court: Overruled, just to what he did.
[Prosecutor]: Did you do anything else with regard to investigating the incident at Head Start — breaking and entering at Head Start?
[Detective Brian Jones]: Not that I’m aware of, no.

This exchange clarifies that the trial court overruled the defendant’s objection only to the extent it sought to preclude statements about what Detective Brian Jones did, not what he had heard regarding the break-ins, by stating, “Overruled, just to what he did.” As such, the evidence offered was both relevant, in that it explained the chain of events in the police investigation, and was non-hearsay, because it precluded the further admission of statements regarding the reported break-ins. The statements were offered to explain the chain of events and were not offered for the truth of the matter asserted.

Further, it is clear that the probative value of the statements was not substantially outweighed by their prejudicial effect. [71] Therefore, their admission did not violate N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 403 (2005) (“Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.”).

Defendant relies upon State v. Al-Bayyinah, 356 N.C. 150, 567 S.E.2d 120 (2002), in which our Supreme Court granted a new trial to a defendant after the trial court allowed testimony accusing the defendant of two previous crimes for which he had been neither indicted nor convicted. This case is distinguishable from Al-Bayyinah in that here there was no testimony directly accusing defendant of other crimes. Implicit in Detective Brian Jones’ testimony is that the police may have suspected defendant of committing other break-ins, but defendant was not in fact accused of any other break-ins. Here, the trial court cured any defect by stating that Detective Brian Jones’ testimony should be limited to what he did, not what he had heard. As such, the undue prejudice resulting from the admission of the statements in Al-Bayyinah was much greater than any slight prejudice which may have occurred here and which did not substantially outweigh the probative effect of the statements.

Further, Al-Bayyinah dealt with the issue of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8C-1, Rule 404(b) (2005), which states that

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State v. Patterson, 648 S.E.2d 250, 185 N.C. App. 67, 2007 N.C. App. LEXIS 1733 (N.C. Ct. App. 2007).

648 S.E.2d 250 (State v. Patterson) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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