State v. King

• Decision Date: 23 May 1945
• Docket Number: 580
• Citation: 34 S.E.2d 3,225 N.C. 236
• Parties: STATE v. KING.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

34 S.E.2d 3

225 N.C. 236

STATE v. KING.

No. 580

Supreme Court of North Carolina

May 23, 1945

The defendant was charged with aiding in the robbery of $160 from the person of the State's witness Lindsay Nelson. The jury returned verdict of guilty, and from judgment imposing sentence the defendant appealed.

Harry M. McMullan, Atty. Gen., and Hughes J. Rhodes and Ralph M Moody, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.

Jones & Jones, of Rockingham, for defendant.

DEVIN Justice.

The evidence offered by the State in the trial below was sufficient to sustain the verdict of guilty. There was no exception to the charge. The only assignments of error relate to the rulings of the trial judge in the exclusion of certain testimony offered by the defendant.

The exception chiefly relied upon was the refusal of the court to permit one of defendant's witnesses, Eleanor Covington to explain and correct her answer to an impeaching question. On cross-examination, in response to a question propounded by the solicitor for the purpose of impeaching her, this witness admitted she had been convicted of larceny. On her re-direct examination she was asked if she understood what conviction meant, and if she had not been found not guilty the only time she was ever tried. The State's objection to these questions was sustained and defendant excepted. However, subsequently the witness was permitted to testify she had never been tried but once and that was in the Recorder's Court, and the entry on the record of that court was admitted showing she had been found not guilty.

It was competent for the defendant to show by this witness, in explanation, that she did not understand the meaning of the word 'convicted' when asked if she had been convicted of a criminal offense, and the witness thus impeached should have been permitted to state that as a matter of fact she had been acquitted of the only charge ever brought against her. The witness was entitled to full opportunity to correct or explain her answers in response to the impeaching questions. Keller v. Furniture Co., 199 N.C. 413, 416, 154 S.E 674. But it appears here that the substance of the excluded testimony was permitted to go to the jury, and we perceive no harmful or prejudicial result to defendant's cause on this account. State v. Elder, 217 N.C. 111, 114, 6 S.E.2d 840. To warrant a new trial it should be made to appear that the ruling complained of was material and...