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308 N.C. 720

304 S.E.2d 226

State v. Starnes

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided July 7, 1983

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1983-07-07

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1983-07-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently December 2001

10 state decisions

80198319902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Justice Exum

¶1concurring in result.

¶2The facts and the legal issue presented are clearly and accurately expounded in the majority opinion. I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that it was not error to admit Dr. Wiegand’s opinion that “a penis had probably caused” the tears in the victim’s vagina. In light of the substantial evidence, apart from Dr. Wiegand’s testimony, that defendant’s penis did cause these tears and penetrate the victim’s vagina, I am satisfied that the error in admitting Dr. Wiegand’s opinion about it is not reversible.

¶3If Dr. Wiegand had had a medical opinion about the matter based on his observation and perhaps the characteristics of the vaginal tears themselves, I would agree that he should have been *735permitted to express it. His own testimony makes it abundantly clear that he had no medical opinion that a penis caused the tears. When asked upon what his opinion was based, he answered:

The manner in which the patient’s injuries, as best she could tell me, and from my examination, suggested that she had been beaten and had struggled quite violently; further, that there were present secretions which appeared to be seminal fluid.

¶4It requires no medical expertise to infer from these facts that a penis probably caused the tears. The physician was in no better position than the jury to make such an inference from the facts which he posited. If this answer were not enough to indicate his lack of a medical opinion, surely the physician’s other testimony makes it plain. He said flatly:

I can only say that an object that was larger than the capacity of her vaginal opening to her mid passage was placed there and caused injuries that we have described. I cannot say what object caused those injuries. I can say that because of the number of the injuries and the — the various areas involved that — that more than one penetration or more than one entrance was made but I really cannot say what caused that. [Emphasis supplied.]

¶5Then, on cross-examination, he said:

Q. And you say in your conclusion some foreign object did the damage that you found, some foreign object was inserted?
A. That’s correct.
Q. Your opinion is, your conclusion is you can’t say what that foreign object was?
A. No, I can’t.

¶6It was, of course, proper for the physician to give his medical opinion that the victim’s vagina had been penetrated by something. His medical expertise obviously led him to formulate an opinion on this. He was in a better position than the jury to assess the presence or absence of some kind of penetration.

¶7*736It was improper, however, to take the physician’s opinion that the penetrating object was a penis because by his own admission he had no such opinion arising out of his medical expertise.

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