Marcus Orlando Orr was indicted on charges of rape and statutory rape. A jury found him guilty of statutory rape but was unable to reach a verdict on the rape charge, and the trial court declared a mistrial as to rape. Following the denial of his amended motion for new trial, Orr appeals his conviction. He raises several challenges to the denial of his motion for new trial, all of which concern a detective’s testimony at trial. He contends that it was error to admit the detective’s testimony for various reasons, that his appointed trial counsel was ineffective in failing to object to this testimony, and that the trial court should have modified its jury charge to instruct the jury to disregard the detective’s testimony. We agree that a portion of the detective’s testimony was impermissible and that appointed counsel should have objected to it. Because we conclude that under these circumstances Orr was harmed by these errors, he is entitled to a new trial. We therefore reverse the judgment below and remand for a new trial. Construed to support the jury’s verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed that the victim, who was 15 on the date of the incident, was alone in her bedroom while her parents were at work. Orr, a family acquaintance who was 26 years old at the time, entered the house uninvited and walked to the victim’s bedroom. He pushed the victim down on her bed, pulled down her panties, and “was on top of” her and “tried to” have intercourse with her. When the victim’s father came home Orr “jumped up and . . . shut the door” before hiding in the bedroom closet.
The victim’s father came home to check on the victim, as was his custom during the summer months. He entered the house through the unlocked back door, heard the victim’s bedroom door slam, and became suspicious because that had never happened before. He asked his daughter to open her bedroom door and she refused at first. When she did open the door she was sitting on her bed and appeared “nervous.” The father smelled a “funny smell”‘ that he described as “a sexual smell.” He asked the victim about it, but she ran past him out of the house.. The father “had a pretty good idea at that point that something was going on.” He looked in the closet, discovered Orr, and “pulled him out.” Orr insisted that the situation was not “like what you think it is” and that he was at the victim’s home looking for his niece. He asked the victim’s father not to call the police, and eventually the father reluctantly allowed him to leave.
