Case ID: nc_314/html/0659-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. LUIS MERCADO
    No. 121PA85
    (Filed 5 November 1985)
    On discretionary review of the decision of the Court of Appeals, 72 N.C. App. 521, 325 S.E. 2d 313 (1985), reversing judgment of Bowen, J., entered at the 12 December 1983 Criminal Session of Cumberland County Superior Court, sentencing defendant to three years’ imprisonment upon a jury verdict finding defendant guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
    
      Lacy H. Thornburg, Attorney General, by Roy A. Giles, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, for the state appellant.
    
    
      James R. Parish for defendant appellee.
    
   PER CURIAM.

We allowed the state’s petition for discretionary review principally to consider whether the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that involuntary manslaughter was not a lesser included offense of murder. This question has now been addressed and answered in State v. Greene, 314 N.C. 649, 336 S.E. 2d 87 (1985) (involuntary manslaughter is a lesser included offense of murder).

The Court of Appeals also held there was no evidence of involuntary manslaughter and had it not been submitted there was a reasonable likelihood defendant would have been acquitted altogether. Therefore, the submission of involuntary manslaughter was reversible error; and defendant, having been acquitted of all other degrees of homicide, was entitled to be discharged. We do not think this aspect of the Court of Appeals’ opinion is deserving of further review.

The result is that the state’s petition in the instant case may be considered improvidently allowed.

Discretionary review improvidently allowed.