State v. Capps, COA24-653, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Apr. 2, 2025)

In this McDowell County case, defendant appealed his conviction for felonious possession of stolen goods, arguing error in excluding certain cross-examination testimony as hearsay and denying his motion to dismiss for insufficient evidence. The Court of Appeals found no error.

In November of 2021, a woman called police to report her pop-up camper was missing from her driveway. In December, officers who responded to a fire on defendant’s property discovered the stolen camper in a field near a makeshift campground. Although the camper had been spray-painted a different color and modified to serve as a residence, the officers identified it as the stolen camper by the model and serial number. After a series of interviews, officers came to believe that one or more of the men residing on defendant’s land obtained the camper on his behalf. Defendant came to trial in September 2023 and moved to dismiss the charges, arguing insufficient evidence that he knowingly possessed the stolen camper. The trial court denied the motion. When defense counsel was cross-examining one of the detectives, he asked the detective if defendant told him one of the men on the property lied to defendant. The prosecutor objected on hearsay grounds and the trial court sustained the objection; defense counsel did not make an offer of proof.

The Court of Appeals took up defendant’s hearsay argument first. Because defendant did not make an offer of proof, the matter would normally not be preserved for appeal. However, defendant argued that the offer of proof was in the leading question itself, pointing to a nonprecedential opinion in support, State v. Everett, 178 N.C. App. 44 (2006), aff’d and ordered not precedential, 361 N.C. 217 (2007). The court rejected defendant’s argument, explaining that he “fail[ed] to show the essential content or substance of [the detective’s] excluded testimony; all that appears in the record is defense counsel’s unanswered leading question.” Slip Op. at 6. Since there was no substance of the detective’s potential answer in the record, there was no basis to support appellate review.

Moving to the motion to dismiss, the court noted that the State offered evidence to show defendant’s constructive possession of the camper because he was not the one who purchased or moved the camper to the property directly. The record contained evidence that defendant knew the camper was stolen by the time he was interviewed, along with testimony that defendant didn’t know where the camper came from and didn’t want to ask. These represented “incriminating circumstances” to support the State’s argument for constructive possession and justified denying defendant’s motion to dismiss. Id. at 11.