In this Mecklenburg County case, the defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon for shooting and killing Oren Reed. Reed’s aunt found his body in a pool of blood inside the backdoor of his home around 5 p.m. on November 21, 2013. The doorframe for the backdoor was splintered, and glass and bullet shells were on the ground. The State introduced evidence at trial that the previous day someone had kicked in the side door to Chris Townsend’s house, breaking the door frame, and had stolen a revolver and bullets. Other evidence showed that the stolen gun, found in defendant’s possession when he was arrested, was used to fire 22 of the 23 spent cartridges at Reed’s residence. An expert testified that two of the bullets recovered from Reed’s body shared similar class and characteristics as bullets fired from this gun. 

(1) On appeal, the defendant argued that the trial court committed plain error by admitting evidence of the break-in at the Townsend residence. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, reasoning that the evidence was relevant because it tended to show how the defendant gained possession of the murder weapon. The evidence also was admissible under N.C. R. Evid. 404(b) as it showed the natural development of the facts and completed the story of the murder and because there were substantial similarities between the two incidents.

(2) The defendant also argued on appeal that the trial court committed plain error by instructing the jury on the doctrine of recent possession, which allows a jury to infer that the possessor of recently stolen property stole the property. The defendant argued that this inference was not relevant to whether he broke into Reed’s house and killed him and that it likely caused the jury to convict the defendant of felony-murder based on the break-in to Townsend’s home. The Court of Appeals determined that, even presuming the trial court erred in instructing the jury that it could consider the doctrine of recent possession in deciding whether the defendant was guilty of first-degree murder, the defendant failed to show the instruction had a probable impact on the verdict. The Court reasoned that even if the recent possession instruction could have caused the jury to improperly convict the defendant of felony-murder, the instruction did not have a probable impact on first-degree murder verdict because the jury also found the defendant guilty based on malice, premeditation and deliberation.