Criminal Practice – Witness Misconduct – No Mistrial – Evidence – Expert Witness

Although defendant argues that the victim’s father engaged in a “pattern of abusive and prejudicial behavior” during defendant’s trial, the record demonstrates that the trial judge took immediate measures to address the father’s behavior and ordered him to answer questions directly and to refrain from making editorial comments or threats. In light of the immediate and reasonable steps taken by the trial court to address the father’s behavior and defendant’s failure to request additional action by the trial court, move for a mistrial, or object to the trial court’s method of handling the alleged misconduct in the courtroom, we find that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it did not sua sponte declare a mistrial.

On remand from the N.C. Supreme Court, we again find no error in defendant’s conviction for statutory sexual offense of a person 13, 14, or 15 years old and for statutory rape of a person 13, 14, or 15 years old.

Defendant argues that the testimony of Kelli Wood, the state’s expert in clinical social work specializing in child sexual abuse cases, is not reliable because the research she relied upon was flawed in the following ways: they assumed participants were honest; they did not have any methods or protocols in place to screen out participants who made false allegations; and because there was no indication of how many participants might have lied, it was impossible to know the “error rate.” Defendant also argues that when Wood provided a list of possible reasons why an alleged victim might delay disclosure, she did not account for the obvious alternative explanation that the abuse did not occur.

A careful review of the transcript establishes that these concerns were addressed throughout the examination and cross-examination of Wood and that Wood was able to provide detailed explanations for each.

We hold that Wood’s testimony was the product of reliable principles and methods sufficient to satisfy the second prong of N.C. R. Evid. 702(a), and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting this testimony.

No error.

State v. Shore (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-112-18, 32 pp.) (John Arrowood, J.) Appealed from Mecklenburg County Superior Court (Stanley Allen, J.) On remand from the N.C. Supreme Court. Margaret Force for the state; Daniel Blau for defendant. N.C. App.