Court Opinion

ID: 9587061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:17:43.72589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:00.767513
License: Public Domain

Justice NEWBY
dissenting.
The issue in this appeal is whether the evidence presented at trial could have supported a jury finding that there was reasonable doubt that defendant willfully deleted Teacher Apprenticeship Program (“TAP”) files from her employer’s computer network. Be*357cause the evidence weighs overwhelmingly in favor of finding that defendant deleted the TAP files knowingly and with unlawful intent, the only reasonable conclusion is that defendant acted willfully in deleting the TAP files. I would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals majority and respectfully dissent.
Because there was no dispute among the Court of Appeals panel that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury that the State was required to prove defendant deleted the TAP files willfully, this Court must determine whether the lack of such an instruction was prejudicial to defendant. “A defendant is prejudiced by errors relating to rights arising other than under the Constitution of the United States when there is a reasonable possibility that, had the error in question not been committed, a different result would have been reached at the trial out of which the appeal arises. The burden of showing such prejudice under this subsection is upon the defendant." N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a) (2007) (emphasis added). To show prejudice in the instant case, defendant must demonstrate on appeal that the totality of the evidence presented at trial admits a reasonable possibility that, had the trial court instructed the jury on willfulness, the jury would have found defendant not guilty of damaging a computer or computer network in violation of N.C.G.S. § 14-455(a).
Section 14-455(a) provides in pertinent part: “It is unlawful to willfully and without authorization alter, damage, or destroy a computer, computer program, computer system, computer network, or any part thereof.” Id. § 14-455(a) (2007). One definition of “willful” as it is used in criminal statutes is “the wrongful doing of an act without justification or excuse.” State v. Arnold, 264 N.C. 348, 349, 141 S.E.2d 473, 474 (1965) (per curiam) (citation omitted). More simply stated, “the word willful means not only designedly, but also with a ‘bad purpose.’ ” State v. Clifton, 152 N.C. 765, 766-67, 152 N.C. 800, 802, 67 S.E. 751, 752 (1910) (citations omitted). To show she was prejudiced by the lack of a jury instruction on willfulness, defendant must demonstrate a reasonable possibility that the jury would have found that the State failed to prove at least one of the components of willfulness beyond a reasonable doubt.
The majority seems to assert the jury could have found reasonable doubt with respect to the “bad purpose” component in defendant’s testimony that she believed she was authorized to delete files from Latin American Resource Center (“LARC”) computers. While it is true defendant presented evidence that she believed she had permission to delete some files from LARC’s network, it is undisputed *358that defendant was not authorized to delete TAP files in particular, and defendant never testified that she even thought she was authorized to delete TAP files. Defendant testified that, after her termination from LARC, defendant said to Aura Camacho-Maas, “[Sjince my work is no good I guess you won’t mind if I take my work off computer [sic],” and that Camacho-Maas responded, “[Tjhis was no consequence to her, that the work was not good, and it was no consequence.” This testimony shows defendant may have been authorized to remove her own work product from LARC’s network, but it does not reflect any belief by defendant that she was authorized to delete the TAP files that are the basis of her conviction.
The majority also argues the jury could have found reasonable doubt regarding the “designedly” component of willfulness based on a theory that defendant’s deletion of TAP files was accidental. At no point, however, did defendant explicitly testify that any deletion of TAP files was done by accident or that she did not intend to delete TAP files. Indeed, defendant testified that she did not delete the TAP files at all and that she was not even able to access those files at the time of her termination, stating:
I deleted part of the grant which was the grant that I had written. I think that was about three, three files, but it was not the TAP file.
TAP file was in the server. It was a server and, in order for, to go into the server. She had already worked in the server, so I could not to go into the TAP file.
I would have go into the server. Server couldn’t be but one person going into it at the time, so I don’t know, [sic]
Moreover, in attempting to carry her burden on appeal of showing a reasonable possibility of a different result but for the instructional error, defendant addresses the “designedly” component of willfulness by stating simply, “Defendant may have deleted some files accidentally.” Defendant fails to expound on this argument, instead supporting it with only a single reference to her trial testimony: asked whether she deleted a certain file, defendant responded, “I’m not sure whether I deleted that file or not.” A contextual reading of this testimony, however, reveals that defendant was not responding to a question about the TAP files at issue here, but rather a file captioned “Organizational Information” that provided details about LARC itself. It would be unreasonable for a jury to infer from this minimal testi*359mony that defendant deleted the TAP files accidentally, especially given the opposing testimony presented by the State.
In determining whether defendant has borne her burden of showing a reasonable likelihood of acquittal had the willfulness instruction been given, our lodestar must be reasonableness under the circumstances. For a finding of prejudice to be made under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a), the possibility of a different outcome but for the error in question must be “reasonable.” N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a). Thus, a mere scintilla of evidence tending to support defendant’s claim that she did not act willfully does not establish prejudice per se. We must consider and balance the totality of the evidence presented at trial. The majority’s weighing of the evidence, however, focuses exclusively on inferences that might favor defendant and fails to address the overwhelming evidence presented by the State to prove that defendant deleted the TAP files knowingly and with unlawful intent.
The State’s evidence tended to show that when defendant was terminated on 15 August 2005, she “became enraged” and “[h]er words and her body language were . . . very violent.” Defendant stated she was going to “destroy [Camacho-Maas] in the agency.” Defendant also refused to surrender her keys to the LARC offices before receiving her last paycheck. Camacho-Maas explained that defendant would be paid at the end of the month as usual. Defendant returned to the LARC offices the next day, and Camacho-Maas, having noticed by then that the TAP files had been deleted from LARC’s server, called the police. Defendant admitted to the police that she had copied files from LARC’s server onto a flash drive and removed them from the LARC computer. Detective James Neville of the Raleigh Police Department’s cybercrimes unit testified that he found approximately 304 LARC files on defendant’s flash drive, about 80% of which were TAP files that had been “either deleted or deleted and overwritten” on LARC’s server. Neville also found a letter on defendant’s flash drive stating, “When I am paid in full you may have what I downloaded.” Defendant acknowledged that letter at trial and also admitted that she had told Detective B.R. Williams that “she would give Miss Camacho-Maas’ files back when she got her paycheck.”
In short, the evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that defendant acted knowingly and with unlawful intent. Hundreds of the files found on defendant’s flash drive, constituting the vast majority of the LARC files that defendant copied, were TAP files, a fact that weighs heavily against finding that defendant accessed and deleted TAP files by accident. Defendant’s attempt to use her copies of the erased TAP *360files as a bargaining chip in seeking her paycheck likewise shows that defendant was well aware that she deleted those files from LARC’s server. Defendant knew her copies of the TAP files had value to LARC because she knew those files were missing from LARC’s server. Defendant’s effort to use the TAP files to extract her paycheck also strongly demonstrates her bad purpose in copying the TAP files and then deleting them from LARC’s server. Meanwhile, as discussed above, defendant presented no evidence that she thought she was authorized to delete TAP files and never testified that any deletion of TAP files was done by accident.
Considering the totality of the evidence, which weighs prohibitively against finding defendant acted accidentally or without a bad purpose in deleting the TAP files, defendant has failed to demonstrate a reasonable possibility that a properly instructed jury would have found reasonable doubt as to the willfulness element of N.C.G.S. § 14-455(a). Therefore, under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a), defendant was not prejudiced by the lack of an instruction on willfulness, and her conviction should be left undisturbed. I respectfully dissent.
Justices EDMUNDS and BRADY join in this dissenting opinion.