Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Feb. 15, 2022)

This post summarizes criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on February 15, 2022. As always, these summaries will be added to the School’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present. (1) The trial court did not err in refusing to instruct the jury on voluntary intoxication where there was not substantial evidence the defendant was so intoxicated that he could not form a premeditated and deliberate intent to kill; (2) The trial court did not err by admitting a handgun into evidence before its relevance was established or commit prejudicial error by admitting the handgun without the State establishing a chain of custody State v. Green, 2022-NCCOA-95, ___ N.C. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___ (Feb. 15, 2022). In this Richmond County case, the defendant was found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill for shooting an acquaintance during an argument, and, during the same incident, shooting another acquaintance who was standing nearby in the leg. The defendant had been drinking for more than six hours before he shot the victims. After he began drinking and several hours before the shooting, he displayed a gun in front of a child. After the shooting, he drove to another acquaintance’s house and honked his car horn for thirty minutes.  At trial, he requested that the judge instruct the jury on voluntary intoxication. The judge refused this request. (1) On appeal, [...]