State v. Spruiell, ___ N.C. App. ___, 798 S.E.2d 802 (Apr. 4, 2017)

Rejecting the defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim with respect to his first-degree felony murder conviction, the court also rejected the proposition that a felony murder conviction cannot be predicated on a felony of shooting into occupied property where that felony also was the cause of the victim’s death. Reviewing the relevant case law, the court concluded:

[I]t is clear that neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has ever expressly recognized an exception to the felony murder rule for the offense of discharging a weapon into occupied property. At most, North Carolina courts have recognized a very limited “merger doctrine” that precludes use of the felony murder rule in situations where the defendant has committed one assault crime against one victim and the State seeks to use that assault as the predicate felony for a felony murder conviction.