A jury found Adam Ross Emberson guilty of aggravated assault and aggravated battery. The trial court merged the two convictions, but did not specify which merged into the other, and imposed a single sentence of twenty years comprised of ten years to serve and the remainder on probation. Emberson appeals claiming that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction; that the trial court erroneously admitted certain evidence, and that the prosecutor made improper statements during closing argument. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of conviction and sentence with direction. 1. The evidence was sufficient to support the conviction. The State produced testimony from three men that, as they were walking together along the side of a road at night, a passing car swerved at them and almost hit them, then turned around and passed by again while swerving and attempting to hit them a second time. One of the men testified that he hit the driver’s side of the car with a rock on the second pass, and that the car stopped and the three men confronted the driver and a passenger in the car. Two of the three men testified that they saw the driver get out of the car wielding a machete, and one testified that he saw the driver strike the third man in the group on the shoulder with the machete. The victim of the machete blow testified that he did not see the driver get out of the car, but as he was arguing with the passenger, he turned around and was immediately hit by the driver with an object that cut into his shoulder. After the machete attack, all three men ran from the scene, and the victim was subsequently taken by ambulance for treatment at a hospital. Evidence showed that the machete blow sliced through the victim’s collar bone; severed tendons; partially severed the victim’s rotator cuff, and left a disfiguring scar across the top of the victim’s shoulder.
The next morning, the two men who were with the victim during the attack testified that they located a car at a nearby residence which matched the type and color of the car driven by the attacker and which had a dent on the driver’s side in the area where the rock was thrown. Emberson lived at the residence and the men confronted him and accused him of being the attacker. Police were called to the residence and an investigation ensued during which Emberson denied any involvement in the attack. Both men who were with the victim identified Emberson in a police photographic lineup as the man who attacked the victim with a machete. The victim identified Emberson as the attacker in the same photographic lineup, but also pointed out one other man in the lineup who he said could be the attacker.
