State v. Cagle, ___ N.C. App. ___, 830 S.E.2d 893 (Jul. 2, 2019)

The trial court did not err in this murder case by declining to use the defendant’s requested special instruction on deliberation. The defendant also requested a special jury instruction that paraphrased a passage from State v. Buchanan, 287 N.C. 408 (1975) to explain the concept of deliberation. The trial judge did not err by refusing that request and using the pattern jury instruction on deliberation instead. The pattern jury instruction was a correct statement of the law, and it embraced the substance of the defendant’s request.