State v. Woody
| Decision Date | 20 January 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 93,93 |
| Citation | 277 N.C. 646,178 S.E.2d 407 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. Robert Lee WOODY. |
Robert Morgan, Atty. Gen., Buie Costen, and William W. Melvin, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.
White, Crumpler & Pfefferkorn by Joe P. McCollum, Jr., Winston-Salem, for defendant.
Relying upon State v. Pike, 273 N.C. 102, 159 S.E.2d 334, the defendant assigns as error the failure of the trial judge to conduct a voir dire examination to determine the legality of the defendant's arrest when the defendant objected to the arresting officer's testifying as to what he found upon the defendant's person, no reason for such objection having been stated. This assignment of error is without merit.
The question to which the objection was made was, 'What did you find on his person?' Prior to this question, the officer had testified, without objection, that the clerk at the ABC store had told him of the robbery just perpetrated and that the robber had fled from the scene in a brown and white 1958 Ford with two occupants, one a white man and one a Negro, the car bearing a specified license number; that the car in which the defendant, a Negro, was riding with a white man met this description and carried a license tag with the specified number; the officer approached this car and instructed the defendant to get out and put his hands on the top of the car, which the defendant did; and the officer then searched him. Previously, Mr. Wooten, the white man who was in the vehicle with the defendant, had testified, without objection, that this occurred seven or eight minutes after they left the ABC store, and that he told the officers the defendant had robbed the store and had the money and the pistol.
Under these circumstances, the arrest of the defendant without a warrant was clearly lawful. G.S. § 15--41(2). Having every reason to believe that the defendant was an armed robber, fleeing from the scene of the crime just perpetrated, it was lawful for the officer, as an incident of the arrest, to search him then and there for weapons and for the fruits of the robbery. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889; State v. Tippett, 270 N.C. 588, 595, 155 S.E.2d 269.
At the time of the defendant's objection to the solicitor's question concerning the result of the search, the testimony already received, without objection, showed a lawful arrest and a lawful search. The defendant did not request an inquiry in the absence of the jury into these matters and did not suggest that he desired to offer testimony contradicting that of the State on these points. State v. Pike, supra, on the other hand, was a case in which there was no search of the defendant, but the officer was asked what items the defendant, himself, removed from his pocket in the presence of the officers. Upon objection, the jury was excused and, while the jury was out, the defendant requested the court to hear his testimony with reference to the admissibility of the self-incriminating evidence. This request was denied and the officer was thereupon permitted to testify, in the presence of the jury, concerning the items so removed by the defendant from his own pocket. The Pike case is clearly distinguishable from the present one.
The assignment of error for the failure of the trial court to grant the defendant's motion for judgment of nonsuit in both cases is overruled. It would be difficult to imagine clearer evidence of robbery with firearms than that presented by the State in this case....
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