Court Opinion

ID: 9623519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:34:58.626183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:29.898467
License: Public Domain

WYNN, Judge,
concurring in result only.
I concur with the majority opinion’s holding that, under our previous precedents, we must affirm Defendants’ convictions for first-*434degree kidnapping and other charges. I write separately to point out that our recent case law fails to make any distinction between the crimes of first-degree kidnapping and robbery with a dangerous weapon in the context of armed home invasions.
As our Supreme Court articulated in State v. Fulcher,
It is self-evident that certain felonies (e.g., forcible rape and armed robbery) cannot be committed without some restraint of the victim. We are of the opinion, and so hold, that G.S. 14-39 was not intended by the Legislature to make a restraint, which is an inherent, inevitable feature of such other felony, also kidnapping so as to permit the conviction and punishment of the defendant for both crimes. To hold otherwise would violate the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. Pursuant to the above mentioned principle of statutory construction, we construe the word “restrain,” as used in G.S. 14-39, to connote a restraint separate and apart from that which is inherent in the commission of the other felony.
294 N.C. 503, 523, 243 S.E.2d 338, 351 (1978). In applying the test laid out in Fulcher, the Supreme Court further clarified,
The key question here is whether the kidnapping charge is supported by evidence from which a jury could reasonably find that the necessary restraint for kidnapping “exposed [the victim] to greater danger than that inherent in the armed robbery itself, . . . [or] is . . . subjected to the kind of danger and abuse the kidnapping statute was designed to prevent.
State v. Pigott, 331 N.C. 199, 210, 415 S.E.2d 555, 561 (1992) (emphasis added) (quoting State v. Irwin, 304 N.C. 93, 103, 282 S.E.2d 439, 446 (1981)). Thus, when faced with the type of armed-home invasion that occurred in the instant case, the critical issue is whether the restraint used by the defendants placed the victims in “greater danger” or subjected the victims to a particular “danger and abuse” aside from that which is inherent in robbery with a dangerous weapon.
In State v. Beatty, our Supreme Court found that “the binding and kicking [of the victim] were not inherent, inevitable parts of the robbery” and exposed the victim to a greater degree of danger than which is inherent in an armed robbery. 347 N.C. 555, 559, 495 S.E.2d 367, 368 (1998) (emphasis added). Likewise, in Pigott, the binding of the victim’s hands and feet, “rendering him utterly helpless,” was held to “constitute [] such additional restraint as to satisfy that element of *435the kidnapping crime.” 331 N.C. at 210, 415 S.E.2d at 561. However, the victim in Pigott was also shot in the head while bound, and was found to have died either from the gunshot wound or from smoke inhalation from the fire that the defendant subsequently set to the building. Id. at 202, 415 S.E.2d at 557.
In the instant case, this Court is bound by our prior holding in State v. Morgan, 183 N.C. App. 160, 645 S.E.2d 93 (2007). See In re Appeal from Civil Penalty, 324 N.C. 373, 384, 379 S.E.2d 30, 37 (1989) (“Where a panel of the Court of Appeals has decided the same issue, albeit in a different case, a subsequent panel of the same court is bound by that precedent, unless it has been overturned by a higher court.”). In Morgan, this Court held that simply binding the victims, even in the absence of other physical violence, was sufficient to sustain a charge of first-degree kidnapping. 183 N.C. App. at 168-69, 645 S.E.2d at 99-100. Thus, on the question of restraint, this Court has extended the holdings of our Supreme Court to the point wherein any binding of the victims in an armed home invasion or robbery will constitute restraint sufficient to sustain a charge of kidnapping. I note the subsequent incongruity of outcomes in a case such as this, in which the victims were loosely bound and physically unharmed, but the defendants are nonetheless guilty of first-degree kidnapping, and a case such as State v. Wade, in which we vacated the charge of second-degree kidnapping because the dragging and severe beating of the victim — but without binding his hands or feet — was held to be “an inherent and integral part of either the robbery with a dangerous weapon or the assault.” 181 N.C. App. 295, 302, 639 S.E.2d 82, 88 (2007). This incongruence needs resolution by our Supreme Court.