The Court of Appeals released several criminal law opinions yesterday. One that caught my eye was State v. Merrell, __ N.C. App. __ (2011). In a nutshell, the defendant was an alcoholic who lived with his sister and her family. He began sexually abusing his niece, in a variety of ways, when she was nine. He was convicted of attempted first-degree statutory rape and five counts of indecent liberties. Although he did not request a jury instruction on voluntary intoxication, he argued on appeal that the trial judge committed plain error by failing to give one. The court of appeals rejected this argument. It began by noting that both rape and indecent liberties are specific intent crimes, and that “[w]here a crime requires a showing of specific intent, voluntary intoxication may be a defense to the criminal charge.” [Update: after conducting some further research, I think it is more accurate to say that attempted rape -- the offense at issue in Merrell -- is a specific intent crime to which voluntary intoxication may be a defense. Merrell sometimes uses language that includes the completed offense as well, but the state supreme court ruled in State v. Boone, 307 N.C. 198 (1982), that voluntary intoxication is not a defense to the completed crime, and in State v. Jones, 353 N.C. 159 (2000), the court stated that completed rape is a general intent crime. The distinction between specific intent and general intent is elusive and frequently criticized by commentators, but as it pertains to the specific issue of [...]
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