Court Opinion

ID: 9588566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:35:51.053907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:18.273343
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice BILLINGS
dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion that holds that the evidence was insufficient to support the defendant’s conviction for robbery of the television and watch.
The majority seems to conclude1 that the evidence fails to establish either that the items of personal property were taken from the victim or that the defendant took the property.
Regarding the television, the evidence considered in the light favorable to the State showed that the victim had for a period of time possessed a television that sat on a shelf in his living room. Although no one testified that it was present in the room at the moment that the victim was killed, the victim’s neighbors from whom he had rented the house for 19 years noticed immediately upon entering the living room on Sunday morning, 13 October 1984, that the victim’s television set was “missing.” The victim’s bedroom had been ransacked; the dust pattern on the bookshelf in the living room indicated that the television had been recently removed; the antenna from the television was lying on the floor; and although the rest of the living room was orderly, broken ceramic figures lying in front of the book shelf suggested that they had fallen when the television was taken hurriedly. The victim’s body was found in a locked house. Mrs. Carroll, the neighbor who, along with her husband, owned the house, had been home all day Saturday and was concerned because she saw neither the victim nor his car all day Saturday. These facts rebut any inference that missing items may have been taken by someone who came along after the victim was killed. I believe that the conclusion that the television was taken at the time of the murder of the victim is inescapable from the evidence.
*613I reach the same conclusion regarding evidence that the victim possessed the watch at the time of his murder. All of the evidence shows that the murder occurred late Friday night or very early Saturday morning. The victim’s car was seen leaving his house around 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning, being driven in a manner inconsistent with the victim’s driving habits, and was never again seen at the victim’s residence. Only a few hours before he was murdered, the victim was wearing his gold watch, an item that he usually wore. When his body was discovered, the watch as well as other items were missing from his house, the bedroom of which had been ransacked. Although the officers who searched the house were not looking specifically for a watch or ring, they conducted a search to determine what personal belongings were actually inside the house and did not find a television set, watch, class ring or other jewelry. It simply defies reason to find that the evidence is insufficient to justify a reasonable inference that these items were taken from the victim at the time that he was murdered.
The majority seems to say that in order for a defendant to be convicted of robbery, the State must affirmatively show possession of the items by the defendant following the robbery. I do not believe such a showing is invariably necessary.
In the case sub judice the evidence shows that the defendant knew the victim and was expecting the victim to pick him up on Friday night, 12 October 1984. The defendant told a friend that he was going to go to North Carolina and get a car and a television and that he would kill the owner if necessary. The next day he was in possession of the car owned by the victim, who had been murdered in his home in North Carolina. The victim’s television as well as other items of personal property, including a watch that he had been seen wearing on Friday evening, were not in the victim’s house. The defendant told one of his friends that the car would not be missed until Monday and that he had killed the owner. I would hold that this evidence supports a reasonable inference that the defendant not only murdered the victim, an inference that the defendant does not contest on this appeal, but also that the defendant took from the victim at the time of the murder the items which were shown to have been in his possession shortly before the murder and to be missing afterwards.
Justice MITCHELL joins in this dissenting opinion.

. I say “seems to conclude" because although the opinion discusses insufficient evidence of the taking of the television, the watch and the ring, the conclusion following the discussion of the evidence of possession by the victim is that “[t]his evidence is insufficient to establish that the victim possessed the watch or the ring at the time of the alleged robbery.” (Slip op. at 7, 318 N.C. 602, 607, 350 S.E. 2d 56, 59.)