Case Summaries: N.C. Supreme Court (Dec. 18, 2020)

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Supreme Court released on December 18, 2020. The summaries were prepared by Shea Denning, Chris Tyner, and Jonathan Holbrook. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith's Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present. This is the final post for 2020. The blog will return after January 4, 2021. (1) A defendant’s hands and arms may qualify as a deadly weapon for purposes of the felony-murder provision defining as a predicate felony any “other felony committed or attempted with the use of a deadly weapon”; (2) The trial court’s erroneous instruction that the jury could find that the defendant attempted to murder his mother using a garden hoe as a deadly weapon when the evidence did not support that theory was prejudicial error. State v. Steen, ___ N.C. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___ (December 18, 2020). The defendant appealed from his conviction for the first-degree murder of his grandfather based on the felony murder rule using the attempted murder of his mother with a deadly weapon as the predicate felony. The trial court instructed the jury that it could find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder if it found that he killed his grandfather as part of a continuous transaction during which he also attempted to murder his mother using either his hands or arms or a garden hoe as a deadly weapon. The defendant appealed, arguing that his hands and arms were [...]