Case Summaries - NC Court of Appeals

For many years, our colleague Jessie Smith prepared summaries of appellate cases and sent them out via the School of Government’s criminal law listserv. Because she is transitioning her work to focus on criminal justice policy, she will not be summarizing cases anymore, but several of us will collaboratively carry on the service. We will continue to send the summaries out using the listserv, and we are also going to post them here on the blog.  Summaries of North Carolina Court of Appeals opinions from June 18, 2019 are provided below. A defendant is not entitled to a jury instruction on self-defense using deadly force where the evidence is not sufficient to support a finding that the defendant reasonably apprehended death or great bodily harm State v. Pender, ___ N.C. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___ (June 18, 2019) In this assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury case, the trial court properly instructed the jury regarding self-defense.  The defendant was in a physical altercation with another woman, during which she cut the other woman a number of times with a knife.  “Recognizing that a defendant may only use deadly force to protect herself from great bodily injury or death,” the North Carolina Pattern Jury Instructions provide two different sets of jury instructions for self-defense: NCPI-Criminal 308.40 describes when the use of non-deadly force is justified; NCPI-Criminal 308.45 describes when the use of deadly force is justified.  The trial court instructed the jury pursuant to NCPI-Criminal 308.40 and the defendant argued [...]