State v. Welch
State v. Welch
Opinion of the Court
Defendant, convicted of possession with intent to sell and deliver heroin, a controlled substance, in violation of G.S. 90-95(a)(1), contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict him. Defendant offered no evidence, and the State’s evidence in pertinent part was to the following effect: On 6 August 1986 two State Bureau of Investigation detectives, Kevin West and Stephen Porter, saw defendant at the Greensboro airport with no luggage and holding a plane ticket with the name D. Massey-printed on it; they next saw him on 8 August 1986 deplaning at the same airport carrying a paper sack, which had an object inside of it about the same size as a pack of Newport cigarettes that defendant held in his hand; the detectives followed defendant to the baggage retrieval area where he sat down in one of several open telephone booths that were divided by partitions, peeped over the edge of the partition at the detectives, and then moved to an adjacent booth; the detectives approached defendant, identified themselves, and asked to see his airline ticket; defendant showed them a ticket in the name of Charles Johnson and said that was his name; but after producing his Social Security card he admitted that his name was Welch and said someone else reserved the ticket for him; the detectives stated they were doing a narcotics investigation and asked defendant if he would mind being searched; he said he would not and in a quick pat down conducted in the airport’s nearby security office the detectives found nothing in the paper sack and nothing of consequence on defendant; Detective West then ran to the first telephone booth defendant had sat down in and found a Newport cigarette pack containing twenty-six packets of a white powder; the detectives then ran after defendant, saw him trying to stuff his plane ticket under some bark chips, and arrested him; approximately sixty seconds elapsed from when the detectives first approached defendant in the phone booth and when Detective West found the cigarette pack, and during that time neither detective saw any other people around the booths; the white powder was later determined to be heroin.
That the white powder in the cigarette package found by Detective West was heroin and that heroin is a controlled substance under the North Carolina Controlled Substances Act, G.S. 90-86 to G.S. 90-113.8, is not contested; nor is it disputed that having
Defendants last two arguments are that the court erred in not excluding evidence of his presence at the airport on 6 August 1986 and his possession of airline tickets with someone else’s names on them. He argues that this evidence was irrelevant and therefore inadmissible. Under Rule 401, N.C. Rules of Evidence, evidence is relevant if it makes “any fact that is of consequence
No error.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.