State v. Mumma, 372 N.C. 226 (May. 10, 2019)

On writ of certiorari from a divided decision of the Court of Appeals, ___ N.C. App. ___, 811 S.E.2d 215 (2018), the court held that the trial court’s decision to include an “aggressor” instruction in its self-defense instructions did not constitute plain error. The trial court, without any defense objection instructed the jury on self-defense, stating that the defendant would not be excused from murder or manslaughter on self-defense grounds if he “was the aggressor with the intent to kill or inflict serious bodily harm upon the deceased.” According to the defendant, no evidence was introduced showing him to be the aggressor. The court noted however that because he did not object to the instruction at trial, he waived his right to challenge the aggressor instruction on appeal. Applying the plain error standard, the court found it not satisfied. It noted that the defendant sent multiple text messages to another individual in the hours before the victim’s death indicating that he wanted to kill the victim. Additionally, the record contains no physical evidence tending to validate the defendant’s otherwise unsupported claim of self-defense and does contain substantial physical evidence tending to undercut this claim, including evidence that the victim sustained defensive wounds to her hand, that she sustained stab wounds inflicted from the rear, and that the defendant’s wounds were much less severe than those inflicted upon the victim. As a result, given that the defendant’s claim to have acted in self-defense rested on his otherwise unsupported testimony and that the record contained ample justification for questioning the credibility of the defendant’s account surrounding the victim’s death, the court found itself unable to conclude that any error associated with the instruction rose to the level of plain error.