Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
About
This compendium includes significant criminal cases by the U.S. Supreme Court & N.C. appellate courts, Nov. 2008 – Present. Selected 4th Circuit cases also are included.
Jessica Smith prepared case summaries Nov. 2008-June 4, 2019; later summaries are prepared by other School staff.
Instructions
Navigate using the table of contents to the left or by using the search box below. Use quotations for an exact phrase search. A search for multiple terms without quotations functions as an “or” search. Not sure where to start? The 5 minute video tutorial offers a guided tour of main features – Launch Tutorial (opens in new tab).
In this Cumberland County case, defendant appealed his conviction for first-degree murder by torture, arguing error in (1) denying his motion to dismiss for failure to prove proximate cause, and (2) admitting testimony from two experts for the State. The Court of Appeals found no error.
In November of 2015, the victim, defendant’s 3-year-old daughter, was admitted to the hospital unconscious and with a body temperature of only 88 degrees. The care team at the hospital observed injuries that were indicative of physical and sexual abuse, including tearing of the victim’s anus and bruising on her labia and inner thighs, as well as contusions and hemorrhaging under the skin on her limbs and torso. The victim ultimately died at the hospital, and the cause of death was identified as “acute and organizing bilateral bronchopneumonia in the setting of malnutrition, neglect and sexual abuse.” Slip Op. at 5. At trial, the State called the emergency physician who treated the victim, as well as two other experts, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy and a developmental and forensic pediatrician. Defendant did not object to their testimony at trial. Defendant moved to dismiss the charges at the close of State’s evidence, arguing insufficient evidence to show that he withheld food or hydration to proximately cause the victim’s death. The trial court denied the motion, and defendant was subsequently convicted.
Taking up (1), the Court of Appeals held that defendant’s conduct was torture sufficient to support the conviction. The court established that first-degree murder by torture does not require a showing of premeditation or specific intent to kill the victim, only a “course of conduct by one or more persons which intentionally inflicts grievous pain and suffering upon another for the purpose of punishment, persuasion, or sadistic pleasure.” Id. at 10, quoting State v. Anderson, 346 N.C. 158 (1997). Here extensive evidence in the record showed that the victim did not eat around defendant and lost weight when in his care. Evidence also showed that defendant would beat the victim for her lack of appetite, and defendant would withhold water from her as punishment. The court concluded that “[b]eating [the victim] with a belt, forcing her to exercise, withholding water, and sexually assaulting her” clearly constituted torture. Slip Op. at 11-12. The court then turned to proximate cause, explaining “[f]ar from being unfortunate and independent causes, [the victim’s] starvation and pneumonia are the ‘natural result’ of Defendant’s ‘criminal act[s]’ of violently and sexually abusing [the victim] . . . there was no break in the causal chain.” Id. at 15. Because the victim’s death was a reasonably foreseeable result of defendant’s actions when applying the standard of a “person of ordinary prudence,” the court concluded there was no error in denying defendant’s motion. Id. at 16.
Looking to (2), the court applied a plain error standard as defendant did not object at trial to the testimony of either expert. Explaining that Rule of Evidence 702 governs expert testimony, the court first noted that it did not see error in the testimony of either expert. Presuming an error was committed, the court concluded the jury would likely have reached the same verdict without the challenged testimony due to the sheer weight of evidence against defendant.
The defendant’s shooting of the victim’s mother (the defendant’s wife) while the victim was in utero was a proximate cause of the victim’s death after being born alive. The gunshot wound necessitated the child’s early delivery, the early delivery was a cause of a complicating condition, and that complicating condition resulted in her death.
In a case in which a second officer got into a vehicular accident and died while responding to a first officer’s communication about the defendant’s flight from a lawful stop, the defendant’s flight from the first officer was the proximate cause of the second officer’s death. The evidence was sufficient to allow a reasonable jury to conclude that the second officer’s death would not have occurred had the defendant not fled and that the second officer’s death was reasonably foreseeable. The court rejected the defendant’s argument that the second officer’s contributory negligence broke the causal chain.
There was sufficient evidence that the defendant’s actions were the proximate cause of death. The defendant argued that two unforeseeable events proximately caused the victims’ deaths: a third-party’s turn onto the road and the victims’ failure to yield the right-of-way. The court found that the first event foreseeable. As to the second, it noted that the defendant's speeding and driving while impaired were concurrent proximate causes.
There was sufficient evidence to survive a motion to dismiss in a case in which the defendant was charged with second-degree murder under G.S. 14-17 for having a proximately caused a murder by the unlawful distribution and ingestion of Oxymorphone. There was sufficient evidence that the defendant’s sale of the pill was a proximate cause of death where the defendant unlawfully sold the pill to the two friends, who later split it in half and consumed it; the victim was pronounced dead the next morning, and cause of death was acute Oxymorphone overdose.