Court Opinion

ID: 9624293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:57:05.932424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:42.879756
License: Public Domain

JACKSON, Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
Although I concur with the majority opinion in nearly all respects, I respectfully dissent from Part II in which the majority holds that the trial court did not err in failing to instruct the jury on common law robbery. Because the issue was not preserved for our review, I would vote to dismiss it.
Pursuant to the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure, “[a] party may not assign as error any portion of the jury charge or omission therefrom unless he objects thereto ....” N.C. R. App. P. 10(b)(2) (2007). The majority concedes that defendant failed to object in order to preserve the matter for our review.
Although Rule 10 permits a criminal defendant to assign error to jury instructions despite having failed to object, the Rules require the defendant to “specifically and distinctly” contend that the jury instructions amount to plain error. N.C. R. App. P. 10(c)(4) (2007). Further, even when criminal defendants assign plain error, an “empty assertion of plain error, without supporting argument or analysis of prejudicial impact, does not meet the spirit or intent of the plain error rule.” State v. Cummings, 352 N.C. 600, 637, 536 S.E.2d 36, 61 (2000), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 997, 149 L. Ed. 2d 641 (2001).
Here, defendant failed to object to the jury instructions, failed to “specifically and distinctly” contend plain error in his assignments of error, and failed to argue prejudicial impact in his brief. Therefore, he has waived plain error review and I would dismiss this assignment of error.