Cartera v. Com., 771868
| Decision Date | 22 November 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 771868,771868 |
| Citation | 219 Va. 516,248 S.E.2d 784 |
| Parties | Harold William CARTERA v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
John H. McLees, Jr., Fairfax (Chess, Durrette & Roeder, Fairfax, on brief), for appellant.
Alan Katz, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Marshall Coleman, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.
Before I'ANSON, C. J., and CARRICO, HARRISON, COCHRAN, HARMAN, POFF and COMPTON, JJ.
Convicted by a jury of two counts of forcible rape and two counts of forcible sodomy, the defendant, Harold William Cartera, was sentenced in accordance with the verdicts to serve a total of 34 years in the penitentiary. On appeal, the dispositive question is whether the trial court erred in admitting into evidence certain portions of the testimony of a physician who examined and treated the rape victims after the offenses occurred.
The Commonwealth's evidence shows that on November 7, 1973, the victims, two 14-year-old girls, were hitchhiking in the Reston area of Fairfax County when they accepted a ride from a man with whom they were unacquainted. Promising to drive the girls to their destination, the man drove instead to an isolated construction site and there raped and sodomized the girls. Both victims identified the defendant as their assailant. He denied complicity in the offenses.
Called as a witness by the Commonwealth, Dr. William F. Enos testified that he examined and treated the two girls several hours after the offenses occurred. Over the objection of defense counsel, Dr. Enos was permitted to repeat statements made to him by the two girls in which they not only detailed the circumstances of the attacks upon them but also provided a description of their assailant. Doctor Enos further was permitted to state his conclusion, based upon "the history, the physical examination and the laboratory results," that the girls had been raped.
The defendant contends that the statements made to Dr. Enos concerning the circumstances of the offenses and the description of the assailant were hearsay and that the admission of the statements into evidence was error. This error, the defendant says, was compounded by the fact that Dr. Enos was permitted to state his conclusion that the girls had been raped.
We agree with the defendant. It is undisputed that the challenged statements were hearsay. The Attorney General argues, however, that the statements were admissible under the exception to the hearsay rule which permits a physician to testify to a patient's statements concerning his "past pain, suffering and subjective symptoms" to show "the basis of the physician's opinion as to the nature of the injuries or illness."
We acknowledge the exception to the hearsay rule espoused by the Attorney General. We do not believe, however, that the exception saves the testimony in dispute here. This testimony goes beyond a recital of "past pain, suffering and subjective symptoms." Furthermore, the conclusion stated by Dr. Enos that the two victims had been...
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Shaikh v. Commonwealth, Record No. 2614-03-4 (VA 1/25/2005)
...the jury's verdicts, [error is not harmless when] the [error] may well have affected the jury's decision." Cartera v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 516, 519, 248 S.E.2d 784, 786 (1978). The judge erred in refusing an instruction embodying these propositions merely because he could not find a Suprem......
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Kilpatrick v. Commonwealth
...quantity of cocaine possessed by defendant "would suggest" the defendant "was a person who sold cocaine"), and Cartera v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 516, 518-19, 248 S.E.2d 784 (1978) (holding expert violated ultimate issue rule where he testified victims in rape prosecution "had been raped"), w......
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Cairns v. Com.
.... verdicts, [error is not harmless when] the disputed [evidence] may well have affected the . . . decision." Cartera v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 516, 519, 248 S.E.2d 784, 786 (1978). See also Hooker v. Commonwealth, 14 Va.App. 454, 458, 418 S.E.2d 343, 345 (1992) (holding that "a harmless erro......
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Lawlor v. Commonwealth
...symptoms' to show ‘the basis of the physician's opinion as to the nature of the injuries or illness.’ ” Cartera v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 516, 518, 248 S.E.2d 784, 785–86 (1978); accord Jenkins v. Commonwealth, 254 Va. 333, 339, 492 S.E.2d 131, 134 (1997). However, Couts was not a physician;......