Court Opinion

ID: 9581597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:16:36.495501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:06.804866
License: Public Domain

Justice Lake
dissenting.
It is unquestionably true that upon the defendant’s motion for judgment of nonsuit in a criminal action, the evidence of the State, including any which may have been improperly admitted, must be deemed to be true, the State is entitled to all inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom and any discrepancies or inconsistencies therein are to be resolved in favor of the State. State v. McNeil, 280 N.C. 159, 185 S.E. 2d 156; State v. Vincent, 278 N.C. 63, 178 S.E. 2d 608; State v. Primes, 275 N.C. 61, 165 S.E. 2d 225; State v. Overman, 269 N.C. 453, 153 S.E. 2d 44; Strong, N. C. Index 2d, Criminal Law, § 104. “Regardless of whether the evidence is direct, circumstantial, or both, if there is evidence from which a jury could find that the offense charged has been committed and that defendant committed it, the motion to nonsuit should be overruled.” (Emphasis added.) State v. Goines, 273 N.C. 509, 160 S.E. 2d 469.
In passing upon the motion for judgment of nonsuit, the court does not sit as a jury to determine whether the evidence is sufficient to convince the court beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the offense charged. The function of the court, when such a motion is made, is simply to consider whether there is enough evidence, including all inferences which may reasonably be drawn therefrom, to permit a jury to so find. State v. McNeil, supra. If there is such evidence, it is for the jury, not the court, to say whether it is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt of the offense charged, or of a lesser offense included therein. Strong, N. C. Index 2d, Criminal Law, § 106. This jury was so convinced.
There is, in this record, ample evidence to support a verdict that someone committed the offense charged in the indictment— burglary in the first degree, the felonious intent accompanying the breaking and entering being the intent to rape the female occupant of the house. The undisputed evidence of the. State is that Miss Maness returned to her home just as it was getting dark and was in bed reading, thus having a light burning in her bedroom. After dark, a Negro man broke and entered the house through a locked, outside door. He carried a firéarm. *121Miss Maness, observing him in the hallway, slammed the door to her bedroom and locked it and escaped through the window. When she, and those who came to her assistance, reentered the house immediately after the disturbing events were concluded, the locked door to the bedroom had been forced open and splintered. The intruder called to her as she fled from the house, saying, “Stop, I’ve got a gun.” It is not conceivable that the purpose of the breaking and entering, under these circumstances, was other than to rape the occupant of the home.
The remaining question is whether there was enough evidence to permit a jury to find that the defendant was the perpetrator of this offense. The evidence is that the intruder was a “colored man and tall.” The defendant is a colored man, six feet two inches in height. A red, panel truck was found by the deputy sheriff, shortly after this break-in occurred, on a rural road less than a quarter of a mile from the Maness residence. The defendant drove it to that point and left it there shortly before the breák-in at the Maness residence. There was no residence closer to the truck than the Maness residence. There was no key in the truck. When questioned the following morning about his abandonment of the truck at that point, the defendant told the officer he had run out'of gas. Obtaining an ignition key from the owner, the officer promptly started the truck without difficulty; .The defendant also told the investigating officer that he had not had a firearm in several years. The evidence is that he purchased a sawed-off rifle one week prior to this occurrence and had it in his possession a few hours before the breaking and entering occurred.
The curtain at the window of the bedroom, through which Miss Maness escaped from the house, was found by the deputy sheriff lying on the ground outside the window when he arrived on the premises shortly after the breaking and entering occurred. Six hours later, the officer, continuing his investigation, found in the fold of this curtain a button. The record indicates that this discovery was made six hours before the defendant was arrested. Miss Maness testified that it did not come from any of her garments. The following day, the residence of the defendant was searched, with his permission, and a shirt, from which a button was missing, was found by the officers. The button found in the fold of the curtain, lying on the ground outside the window of Miss Maness’ bedroom, matched exactly the buttons remaining on the shirt so taken from the defendant’s *122residence, not only as to the size, shape, color and texture of the button, but also as to the thread remaining in the holes of the button so found and the thread by which the other buttons were attached to the defendant’s shirt.
To say that this evidence is not sufficient to submit to a jury, for its determination, the question of whether this defendant, beyond a reasonable doubt, was the intruder into the Maness home is, in my opinion, completely at variance with the above stated rules governing the determination of a motion for a judgment of nonsuit.
Justices Higgins and Huskins join in this dissenting opinion.