guilty. The jury had before it, in defendant’s own handwriting, a document that the State credibly argued was a confession that defendant had raped a female friend and had forcible, non-consensual anal intercourse with her. In addition, the jury was told — through the State’s improper cross-examination questions — that an expert had determined that defendant had “a prominent elevation on the psychopathic deviant scale,” as well as being a risk taker willing to do things others do not approve of for the personal enjoyment of doing so. We cannot conclude that the combined effect of an admission of rape and non-consensual anal intercourse together with an expert assessment of psychopathic deviancy was non-prejudicial. See State v. Canady, 355 N.C. 242, 246, 559 S.E.2d 762, 764 (2002) (<HOLDING>); State v. White, 331 N.C. 604, 616, 419 S.E.2d
holding reversal warranted where a permissive inference instruction on possession of a controlled substance contributed to the cumulative prejudicial effect of the errors in defendants trial holding that although neither of the trial courts errors when considered in isolation were necessarily sufficiently prejudicial to require a new trial the cumulative effect of the errors created sufficient prejudice to deny defendant a fair trial holding that cumulative  effect of multiple errors worked to deprive defendant of fair trial although  some errors standing alone would be subject to plain error review and others might be harmless holding that the combined effect of trial counsels errors should be considered holding that instructional errors that are trial errors are subject to harmless error analysis