State v. Ball
| Docket Number | COA 22-1029 |
| Decision Date | 16 January 2024 |
| Parties | STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. JOSEPH BALL |
| Court | North Carolina Court of Appeals |
Heard in the Court of Appeals 20 September 2023.
Appeal by Defendant from judgment entered 17 December 2021 by Judge William H. Coward in Macon County Superior Court Nos. 19 CRS 50650-51
Attorney General Joshua H. Stein, by Assistant Attorney General Ryan C. Zellar, for the State.
Joseph P. Lattimore, for the Defendant-Appellant.
Joseph Ball ("Defendant") appeals from judgments entered by the trial court after a jury verdict finding him guilty of second-degree forcible rape, first-degree burglary interfering with an emergency communication, second-degree kidnapping, and assault on a female. For the reasons stated below, we hold Defendant received a fair trial, free from error.
On the evening of 11 May 2019, Defendant appeared at the residence of K.V.[1]K.V.'s residence is situated on a seventeen-acre farm and contains her primary residence, a storage building, and a guest house. Defendant and K.V. knew each other previously as they had worked together at a Christmas tree lot in Atlanta, Georgia and Defendant had completed carpentry work at her property years earlier.
When K.V. answered the door, Defendant informed K.V. his car was stuck in a nearby ditch, and he could not drive it. K.V offered Defendant her guest house for the night, walked him to the structure, and returned to her residence. K.V. texted two friends notifying them that a person was staying in her guest house and asked them to check in with her in the morning because she felt uncomfortable.
At trial, the parties offered different accounts of what followed. K.V. testified that after she returned to her home, Defendant came to her front door again and asked for a cigarette lighter. After she handed a lighter to Defendant, he barged through the front door into the home. K.V. ran to retrieve her phone to call for help, but before she could reach her phone, Defendant "intercepted [her] and threw [her] on the bed." K.V. landed on her bed face down.
Defendant jumped on the bed, placed his knee in K.V.'s back, grabbed her wrists, and attempted to roll her over. K.V. began to scream, kick, and repeatedly ordered Defendant to leave her home. When Defendant ignored her, K.V. began to beg Defendant not to hurt her and told him she would not call the police if he left her home without hurting her. According to K.V., Defendant responded "I've made it this far, I'm going to finish it." K.V. testified she warned Defendant that "if he did finish it, there would be consequences that he might not like" to which Defendant responded, "I don't care what the consequences are." Defendant moved K.V. onto her back, at which point she kicked Defendant in the face, causing his glasses to fly off his face. At some point during the struggle, K.V. noticed Defendant's cell phone on the bed, picked it up, and attempted to dial 911. However, before she could complete the call, Defendant grabbed the phone out of K.V.'s hands and threw it against the wall.
K.V. testified that during this struggle, she feared for her life as she, a sixty-five-year-old woman, measuring 5'1", and weighing 140 pounds, was resisting a man likely around forty years old, measuring around 6'1", and weighing around 250 to 300 pounds. Recounting the struggle, K.V. testified:
[I]t became pretty clear to me that my choice was to submit or die. I think every woman at some point in their life has imagined what they would do if they were put in this circumstance. And I simply knew I needed to submit so that I could live, so I let him roll me over.
Once K.V. was rolled onto her back, Defendant attempted to vaginally penetrate her but was unable to do so. Defendant then grabbed K.V.'s hair, pushed her face into his crotch, and demanded oral sex. K.V. refused. Defendant eventually penetrated K.V.'s vagina with his penis.
After Defendant ejaculated, he rolled off her, and she quickly leapt off the bed, attempting to escape. As she was running from her bedroom, Defendant, while still lying on the bed, grabbed and ripped off K.V.'s nightgown. K.V. escaped out of her front door nude, grabbed a blanket from the guest house to cover herself, and ran to her neighbor's home to ask for help. After failing to obtain help from her neighbors, K.V. approached a nearby sheriff's vehicle for assistance and reported that she had been raped by a man who was still in her home. The officers accompanied K.V. back to her home and found Defendant asleep on the bed. Defendant did not respond to the officers. The officers rolled him onto his side to handcuff him and removed him from K.V.'s home. K.V. underwent a sexual assault nurse examination ("SANE exam") the following morning on 12 May 2019.
In Defendant's recount of the night in question, he testified he was on his way to Atlanta but realized he was too intoxicated from alcohol to drive and needed to rest before continuing his travels. Defendant testified he had several drinks over the course of the day and by the evening began to "fade in and out of consciousness" after consuming six "Long Island iced teas" at a restaurant. Remembering K.V. lived near the travel route he was planning to take, Defendant decided to try to stay with her until he became sober. According to Defendant, after K.V. agreed to let him stay in her guest house, the two later went into K.V.'s bedroom, where he caressed and kissed K.V.'s breasts while they were lying together on the bed. Defendant testified he initially could not perform sexually, so he had to "manually stimulate" himself. He testified that he and K.V. eventually engaged in consensual sexual intercourse.
On 15 July 2019, Defendant was charged with second-degree forcible rape, first-degree burglary, and interfering with an emergency communication. On 22 January 2020, Defendant was charged with second-degree kidnapping, sexual battery, and assault on a female in a superseding indictment. Defendant's trial was held during the 13 December 2021 criminal session of the Macon County Superior Court.
In addition to the testimony presented by K.V., the State presented the testimony of Corporal Lynch of the Macon County Sheriff's Department, who accompanied K.V. back to her home. Corporal Lynch testified that when he entered K.V.'s home, he found "a large naked man in the bed." Corporal Lynch noted, Corporal Lynch placed Defendant under arrest, handcuffed him and rolled him onto his side because he was vomiting. Corporal Lynch testified there was a strong odor of alcohol and opined that Defendant was "appreciably intoxicated."
The State also called Detective Wright of the Macon County Sheriff's Office Special Victim's Unit who testified to taking pictures and collecting evidence at K.V.'s home as part of her normal investigation practice. Some of the pictures and evidence collected were accepted into evidence at trial and included a photograph of Defendant lying on K.V.'s bed, men's clothing, boots and boxer shorts, a broken cell phone with a cell phone battery, a cigarette butt, a photograph of metal framed eyeglasses on the floor, and a photograph of a torn nightgown on K.V.'s bed.
The State called as a witness Mr. Wendell Ivory of the North Carolina State Crime Lab who reviewed Defendant's DNA samples as well as DNA samples obtained through vaginal swabs of K.V. Mr. Ivory testified "[t]he major DNA profile matches the DNA profile from [Defendant]," while "the minor profile is no different from that of [K.V.]."
The State called Nurse Maillet, a forensic nursing supervisor at Mission Hospital, who was tendered at trial, without objection, as an expert in sexual assault nurse examinations. Nurse Maillet provided expert testimony regarding the SANE exam report, which was performed by Nurse Sullivan, a registered nurse at Mission Hospital, on 12 May 2019.
Nurse Maillet testified she personally reviewed K.V.'s SANE exam report and concluded the examination was conducted in accordance with the proper protocols governing all sexual assault examinations. Nurse Maillet further explained that part of the general protocol governing all sexual assault examinations is for the examining nurse to take photographs of nearly every part of the patient's body. Nurse Maillet personally reviewed the photographs taken during K.V.'s examination, and she observed bruising, abrasions and redness in the photographs that were "consistent with blunt trauma, which is what happens during a sexual assault." In connection with Nurse Maillet's testimony, the SANE exam report was admitted into evidence at trial, without objection.
Additionally, the State admitted into evidence, without objection, a recorded interview between Defendant and members of the Macon County Sheriff's Office conducted two days after the incident. During the recorded interview, which was played for the jury at trial, Defendant stated several times "I was too drunk[,] I don't remember anything" concerning the night in question. In the interview, when asked by officers "why did you do it," Defendant responded by stating, "I don't know."
On 17 December 2021, the jury found Defendant guilty of second-degree forcible rape, first-degree burglary interfering with an emergency communication, second-degree kidnapping, and assault on a female. Following the jury's guilty verdicts, the trial court imposed the following active sentences, which were ordered to run consecutively: 96 to 176 months in prison for the conviction for second-degree forcible rape; 84 to 113 months for...
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