State v. Rhinehart

316 S.E.2d 118, 68 N.C. App. 615, 1984 N.C. App. LEXIS 3448
CourtCourt of Appeals of North Carolina
DecidedJune 5, 1984
Docket8330SC1124
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 316 S.E.2d 118 (State v. Rhinehart) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Rhinehart, 316 S.E.2d 118, 68 N.C. App. 615, 1984 N.C. App. LEXIS 3448 (N.C. Ct. App. 1984).

Opinion

*616 WHICHARD, Judge.

Defendant contends the court erred in denying him the opportunity to cross-examine the complainant regarding her prior sexual conduct with her former boyfriend on the night of the alleged rape and sexual offense. Evidence adduced at an in camera hearing pursuant to G.S. 8-58.6 established that earlier in the evening of the alleged offenses the victim had driven her former boyfriend, whom she had dated for four years, from a night spot to his home, and that she had engaged in sexual intercourse with him while there. The court ruled, following the hearing, that the complainant’s consensual intercourse earlier that night was not relevant for any purpose other than to attack her credibility. It thus excluded the evidence pursuant to G.S. 8-58.6(c).

Defendant cites State v. Fortney, 301 N.C. 31, 269 S.E. 2d 110 (1980), and State v. Younger, 306 N.C. 692, 295 S.E. 2d 453 (1982), in support of his argument that the court erred in excluding this evidence. In Fortney prior sexual conduct of the complainant on the night of the alleged rape was not at issue. In Younger, while such conduct was at issue, the holding that evidence thereof should have been admitted was not based on its relevancy and probativeness, but on its capacity to impeach the complainant’s credibility in light of a prior inconsistent statement. We find neither Fortney nor Younger controlling.

The main thrust of defendant’s argument is that the evidence was admissible under the exception to the rape shield statute which allows evidence of the sexual behavior of the complainant if it

[i]s evidence of a pattern of sexual behavior so distinctive and so closely resembling the defendant’s version of the alleged encounter with the complainant as to tend to prove that such complainant consented to the act or acts charged or behaved in such a manner as to lead the defendant reasonably to believe that the complainant consented.

G.S. 8-58.6(b)(3). This Court found evidence of such a pattern, and held that it should have been admitted, in State v. Shoffner, 62 N.C. App. 245, 302 S.E. 2d 830 (1983). The evidence excluded there “suggested] that the prosecuting witness was the initiator, the *617 aggressor, in her sexual encounters.” Id. at 248, 302 S.E. 2d at 832-33. Her “modus operandi was to accost men at clubs, parties (public places) and make sexual advances by putting her hands ‘all over their bodies.’ ” Id. at 248, 302 S.E. 2d at 833. Seven witnesses, including the defendants, testified “that on the date of the alleged offense the prosecuting witness came to the residence of defendants and while there made sexual advances [toward one defendant] by putting her hand inside [his] pants, and suggested that the parties present have an orgy.” Id. at 247, 302 S.E. 2d at 832. The evidence of the prosecuting witness’s sexual behavior on past occasions was held to conform sufficiently to the defendants’ version of what happened on the occasion of their alleged offenses that it should have been admitted under the closely resembling pattern exception of G.S. 8-58.6(b)(3).

Here, by contrast, there was no such evidence of prior sexually aggressive conduct on the part of the complainant, and defendant offered no evidence of prior sexual advances which the complainant made to him. The evidence showed only that earlier in the evening defendant and the complainant had danced together two or three times at a public bar; that “she was laughing and cuttin’ up with him, jokin’ and that “[s]he . . . just talked to him a lot.”

Defendant suggests that the facts that earlier in the evening the complainant had driven her former boyfriend home, and had engaged in consensual intercourse with him, indicate that her sexual encounter with defendant, when she drove him home or to some other location several hours later, also was consensual. Un-controverted evidence established, however, that defendant was unaware of the prior sexual encounter between the complainant and her former boyfriend. He thus could not have inferred consent therefrom. Further, as a Florida court noted in interpreting a statute similar to G.S. 8-58.6(b)(3), “one episode of sexual intercourse . . . before the assault hardly establishes a ‘pattern of conduct or behavior’ on the part of the victim; and the evidence of having slept with her boyfriend on one occasion bears no relation to the issue of whether the victim consented.” Hodges v. State, 386 So. 2d 888, 889 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1980); see also Winters v. State, 425 So. 2d 203, 204 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1983) (a “few isolated instances” of consensual sexual activities between the complainant and other persons held not to present a “pattern of *618 conduct or behavior” sufficient to meet test of statute); McElveen v. State, 415 So. 2d 746, 748 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1982) (“three specific instances of sexual activity” held “not so repetitive or frequent as to establish a ‘pattern of behavior’ ”). Finally, this Court has held that a complainant’s activity with “other third parties” in “dating-type circumstances” properly was found not material, and that the defendant had failed “to ‘establish the basis of admissibility of such evidence’ under subsection (b)(3).” State v. Smith, 45 N.C. App. 501, 503-04, 263 S.E. 2d 371, 373 (1980).

We hold that evidence of the complainant’s prior consensual intercourse with her former boyfriend earlier in the evening of defendant’s alleged offenses did not qualify for admission under the closely resembling pattern exception of G.S. 8-58.6(b)(3). It was evidence of a single episode, Hodges, supra, of which defendant had no knowledge, in a situation at least closely akin to “dating-type circumstances,” Smith, supra. As such, cross-examination regarding it properly was excluded under G.S. 8-58.6(c) as “irrelevant to any issue in the prosecution.” G.S. 8-58.6(b).

Defendant contends the court erred in excising from the complainant’s written statement to a deputy sheriff regarding the events of the evening in question the sentence, “Charles Sutton [the former boyfriend] and I had intercourse when I took him home.” For the reasons set forth above, we hold that the court properly withheld this evidence from the jury also.

Defendant contends the court erred in denying his request that it instruct the jury as follows:

I further charge you that consent is a defense to the crime of rape. If you should find that the complainant consented to the act or acts as charged or that the complainant behaved in such a manner as to lead the Defendant to reasonably believe that the complainant consented to the acts as charged then it would be your duty to find the Defendant not guilty of the charges herein.

“[T]he . . .

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Bluebook (online)
316 S.E.2d 118, 68 N.C. App. 615, 1984 N.C. App. LEXIS 3448, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-rhinehart-ncctapp-1984.