State v. Calderon, 242 N.C. App. 125 (Jul. 7, 2015)

In this robbery case, no plain error occurred with respect to the trial court’s not guilty mandate. The jury instructions for the offenses of armed and common law robbery conformed to the pattern jury instructions with one exception: the court did not expressly instruct the jury that it had a “duty to return a verdict of not guilty” if it had a reasonable doubt as to one or more of the enumerated elements of the offenses. Instead, for the offense of armed robbery, the court ended its charge to the jury with the following instruction: “If you do not so find or have a reasonable doubt as to one or more of these things, then you will not return a verdict of guilty of robbery with a firearm as to that defendant.” For the offense of common law robbery, the court ended its charge similarly, substituting the words “common law robbery” for robbery with a firearm. Citing State v. McHone, 174 N.C. App. 289 (2005) (trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury that “it would be your duty to return a verdict of not guilty” if the State failed to meet one or more of the elements of the offense), the court held that the trial court’s instructions were erroneous. However, it went on to hold that no plain error occurred, reasoning in part that the verdict sheet provided both guilty and not guilty options, thus clearly informing the jury of its option of returning a not guilty verdict.