May 2—HIGH POINT — A High Point man can't argue that evidence was improperly admitted at his 2019 trial on drug charges because he chose to testify in his own defense about that very evidence, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Robert Lee Lamb Jr. was convicted in October 2019 of felony possession of cocaine, misdemeanor possession of up to one-half ounce of marijuana and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia.

Lamb was the passenger in a car that a Guilford County Sheriff's Office deputy stopped about 4 a.m. on Oct. 22, 2017, because it had revoked tags, according to the Court of Appeals' summary of the case. The deputy smelled marijuana and called for more officers.

A subsequent search of the car found that a book bag belonging to Lamb contained a digital scale and a locked lockbox that Lamb said was not his, the summary said. A deputy pried the box open with a pocketknife and found cocaine, multiple pills and a jar containing pink crystals.

Lamb's attorney sought unsuccessfully to have the evidence excluded from the trial, arguing that the search of the car and the lockbox were improper.

Lamb initially was not going to testify at the trial, but that changed after the trial judge ruled that Lamb's attorney could not ask the deputy about Lamb's statement that the lockbox did not belong to him. The judge ruled that the statement was not admissible unless Lamb could be cross-examined about it.

The Court of Appeals ruled that even if the search had been improper, the decision to have Lamb testify about the evidence found in the search made that evidence admissible.

The court cited a 1994 decision that said, "Where evidence is admitted over objection, and the same evidence has been previously admitted or is later admitted without objection, the benefit of the objection is lost."

If Lamb had not testified, the appeals court could consider whether the evidence was improperly admitted, but since he did, the argument is not relevant, the court wrote.

"In summary, all of the statements central to Defendant's arguments on appeal were admitted into evidence several times, either without objection by Defendant, during Defendant's cross-examination of the State's witnesses, or during Defendant's own testimony," the court wrote.