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State v. Knight7/28/1995
rading, and humiliating defendant and his witnesses. He claims the effect of these questions destroyed the fundamental dignity and solemnity of the trial and influenced the jurors to have a flippant attitude towards defendant's guilt and the trial process itself, in violation of his right to a fair trial. We disagree.
The first incident about which defendant complains occurred during the prosecutor's redirect examination of Dr. Lantz, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the victim. During his direct testimony, Dr. Lantz acknowledged that the victim's body fluids showed a high alcohol content of .28. During cross-examination, defendant inquired about the anesthetic effect of alcohol on the human body and whether a blood alcohol level of .28 would lessen the sensory perception of pain. Dr. Lantz responded that "it would lessen it, but not abolish it." During the State's redirect examination of Dr. Lantz, the following exchange occurred:
Q. And what level of alcohol concentration would they have to have in their blood in order for this chart to show that they did not feel any pain?
A. That's near the botom of the chart. Blood alcohol concentration of point three five to point five zero, stage of influence of alcohol is coma, causing complete unconsciousness. Coma, anesthesia or lack of pain, depressed or abolished reflexes, subnormal temperature, incontinence of urine and feces, embarrassment of circulation and respiration, and possible death.
Q. All right. So person would have to be in a coma or near death before they would no longer be able to feel pain under the influence of alcohol alone, is that correct?
A. Alcohol is not that good of an anesthetic. A person basically would have to be comatose before they would no longer experience pain.
Q. All right. Dr. Lantz, would you recommend heart surgery in which you opened up someone through the rib cage in which you used alcohol alone as an anesthetic?
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
A. As I said before, alcohol is a very poor anesthetic. To achieve anesthesia or abolish the pain sense, you -- alcohol has to be in such a concentration to cause someone to be comatose. And at that point, it's very close to the point of death.
Counsel "may not needlessly badger or humiliate [a witness] by asking insulting and impertinent questions which he knows will not elicit competent or relevant evidence." State v. Daye, 281 N.C. 592, 596, 189 S.E.2d 481, 483 (1972). However, in the instant case the prosecutor's question was not posed merely to badger, degrade, or humiliate either defendant or Dr. Lantz but was clearly relevant under Rule 401 of the North Carolina Rules of Evidence to address the factual issue raised by defendant concerning alcohol's ability to blunt pain perception. N.C.G.S. § 8C-1, Rule 401 (1992). The analogy to heart surgery was apt, in light of the witness' earlier testimony that the victim's chest had been split open during the course of the stabbing, exposing his heart and right lung. The prosecutor's question clarified and refuted defendant's suggestion that the victim's alcohol consumption had anesthetized him from the pain of the massive wounds inflicted upon him. Nothing about the form of the question posed by the prosecutor was insulting or impertinent.
The second incident about which defendant complains under this assignment of error occurred during the prosecutor's cross-examination of Thomas McGee, who testified during direct examination that on the day of the murder, he and defendant consumed
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