## Facts

- Vonnie Ray Bullard and Pedro Hales were neighbors; after Hales shot Bullard’s son in 1978 (and was acquitted), Bullard made repeated threats to kill Hales.
- On August 25, 1981, Bullard and Hales were seen together in Hales’s truck; Bullard appeared angry, and witnesses later saw Bullard barefoot and with a small pistol. Bullard admitted owning a .22-caliber pistol but claimed it was lost days before Hales’s death.
- Hales was last seen alive around 11:00 p.m., intoxicated, near a road in Cumberland County.
- Around 11:05 p.m., witnesses saw Bullard’s distinctive red truck drive toward the area where Hales had been seen; an immediate search failed to locate Hales.
- Around 11:30 p.m., Bullard’s home appeared unoccupied and his truck was gone.
- Witnesses later saw a vehicle stopped on Melvin’s Bridge; it then drove away and appeared to match Bullard’s red truck.
- Near midnight, Bullard’s truck returned quickly to his home and was parked behind the house with headlights turned off, an unusual practice.
- The next morning, investigators found blood and a .22-caliber bullet on the bridge, along with two bloody bare footprints; Hales’s body was recovered from the river below.
- Bullard provided ink and latex-paint impressions of his feet; the State offered expert testimony from Dr. Louise Robbins, a physical anthropologist specializing in barefoot footprint comparison based on heel, arch, ball, and toe-region morphology.
- Over objection, Robbins testified that one of the bloody footprints was made by Bullard; the defense presented two anatomy professors who opined the method was unreliable.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by qualifying Dr. Louise Robbins as an expert and admitting her opinion identifying a bloody barefoot print as Bullard’s, despite the technique’s novelty and disputed reliability.
2. Whether the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss and support a first-degree murder conviction.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed the conviction.
- The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Robbins’s footprint-identification testimony.
- Disputes about the method’s accuracy and uniqueness were for the jury to assess through cross-examination and competing experts.
- The circumstantial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the State, was sufficient for the case to go to the jury and to support the verdict.
- Remaining assignments of error were rejected as without merit.

## Legal Principles

- Expert testimony is admissible when the witness has specialized knowledge beyond the jury’s and the testimony will assist the jury in resolving a fact in issue.
- A novel or uncommon scientific technique is not automatically inadmissible; universal acceptance is not required if the testimony rests on a sufficient body of knowledge and experience and is helpful to the factfinder.
- The trial judge has discretion to determine expert qualification and whether the subject is a proper one for expert evidence.
- Conflicts among qualified experts generally affect the weight of evidence, not admissibility.
- On sufficiency review, circumstantial evidence is evaluated in the light most favorable to the State; the question is whether substantial evidence supports each element and the defendant’s identity as the perpetrator.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a first-degree murder conviction, holding that the trial judge permissibly admitted expert barefoot footprint comparison testimony despite its novelty and that the State’s circumstantial evidence was sufficient to support submission to the jury and the resulting verdict.


State v. Bullard, 312 N.C. 129, 322 S.E.2d 370 (N.C. 1984)