Court Opinion

ID: 9845198
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:16:36.774621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:54.297414
License: Public Domain

WALKER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion which reverses defendant’s conviction for second degree kidnapping.
I am unable to reconcile the facts of this case with those of our Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Hall, 305 N.C. 77, 286 S.E.2d 552 (1982), overruled on other grounds by State v. Diaz, 317 N.C. 545, 346 S.E.2d 488 (1986). In Hall, the defendant was convicted of armed robbery, kidnapping and assault. The kidnapping portion of the indictment charged that the defendant had moved the victim to facilitate the commission of the felony of armed robbery. The evidence showed that the defendant and a co-defendant, who was armed with a pistol, robbed a service station where the victim worked as a night attendant. After emptying the cash register and removing $40 from the victim, the defendant forced the victim into his car, drove him nearly five miles and left him on the side of the interstate highway. Id. at 79-80, 286 S.E.2d at 554-55.
Defendant argued that the crime of armed robbery was complete when his co-defendant pointed the pistol at the victim and attempted *254to take his property; therefore, any movement of the victim was for the purpose of facilitating flight and not to facilitate the commission of the armed robbery. The Court rejected this argument refusing to find a bright line distinction between the various motives listed in the kidnapping statute:
The purposes specified in G.S. 14-39(a) are not mutually exclusive. A single kidnapping may be for the dual purposes of using the victim as a hostage or shield and for facilitating flight, or for the purposes of facilitating the commission of a felony and doing serious bodily harm to the victim. So long as the evidence proves the purpose charged in the indictment, the fact that it also shows the kidnapping was effectuated for another purpose enumerated in G.S. 14-39(a) is immaterial and may be disregarded.
Id. at 82, 286 S.E.2d at 555.
Here, the evidence shows that defendant, during the course of the rape, twice rendered the victim unconscious and moved her to the storage closet. When the victim awoke the next morning, she was wearing only a tank top. However, the defendant contends that all of the elements of rape were complete prior to his movement of the victim to the storage closet. In so doing, he attempts to make the same bright line distinction between “facilitating the commission of any felony” and “facilitating flight” that was specifically rejected in Hall. “[T]he fact that all of the essential elements of a crime have arisen does not mean the crime is no longer being committed. That the crime was ‘complete’ does not mean it was completed.” Id. at 82-83, 286 S.E.2d at 556 (citation omitted). Thus, the jury could have concluded that defendant’s acts constituted one continuous transaction such that the crime of rape, although complete in the apartment, was not completed until the victim was removed to the storage closet. Indeed, the logical extension of defendant’s argument leads to a conclusion that a defendant could never be convicted of kidnapping under a facilitating the commission of a rape theory if the “movement, confinement, or restraint” of the victim occurs after the sexual act. I respectfully decline to make such a bright line distinction.