Court Opinion

ID: 9612390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:08:11.400144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:41:14.386893
License: Public Domain

*670WYNN, Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
While I agree that the State satisfied its burden to prove Defendant’s prior conviction for sentencing, and that the trial court did not err in sentencing Defendant in the aggravated range, I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that Defendant’s act of pulling the victim back into the house was not inherent to the robbery with a dangerous weapon. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
A defendant is guilty of the offense of second-degree kidnapping if he (1) confines, restrains, or removes from one place to another (2) a person sixteen years of age or over (3) without the person’s consent, (4) for the purpose of facilitating the commission of a felony. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-39(a)(2) (2005). “Our Supreme Court, however, has recognized that ‘certain felonies (e.g., forcible rape and armed robbery) cannot be .committed without some restraint of the victim’ and has held that restraint ‘which is an inherent, inevitable feature of [the] other felony’ may not be used to convict a defendant of kidnapping.” State v. Allred, 131 N.C. App. 11, 20, 505 S.E.2d 153, 158 (1998) (quoting State v. Fulcher, 294 N.C. 503, 523, 243 S.E.2d 338, 351 (1978)). “The key question ... 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[.]’ ” State v. Pigott, 331 N.C. 199, 210, 415 S.E.2d 555, 561 (1992) (quoting State v. Irwin, 304 N.C. 93, 103, 282 S.E.2d 439, 446 (1981)).
In Fulcher, the defendant followed a woman into her motel room, pushed the woman into the room, bound the woman and her friend with tape, and then committed crimes against nature upon them. Based upon these facts, the Fulcher court held that the “restraint of each of the women was separate and apart from, and not an inherent incident of, the commission upon her of the crime against nature, though closely related thereto in time.” Fulcher, 294 N.C. at 524, 243 S.E.2d at 352.
Here, the only evidence of restraint is that Defendant grabbed the victim and pulled her back into the house when the victim stepped a foot outside the house in an attempt to escape. To commit a robbery with a dangerous weapon under section 14-87(a) of the North Carolina General Statutes, Defendant had to possess, use, or threaten to use a firearm while taking personal property from a residence where a person was present. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-87(a) (2005) (emphasis added). Defendant’s restraint of the victim was an essen*671tial element of robbery with a dangerous weapon under section 14-87(a), and Defendant’s use of this restraint exposed the victim to no greater danger than that required to complete the robbery with a dangerous weapon. See State v. Beatty, 347 N.C. 555, 495 S.E.2d 367 (1998). Thus, the victim in this case was exposed only to the harm inherent in the robbery with a dangerous weapon, and not to the kind of danger and abuse that the kidnapping statute was designed to prevent. See State v. Ripley, 172 N.C. App. 453, 457, 617 S.E.2d 106, 109 (2005).
Because Defendant’s restraint was an inherent, inevitable feature of the armed robbery which may not be used to convict a defendant of kidnapping, I would vacate Defendant’s conviction for second-degree kidnapping. See Allred, 131 N.C. App. at 20, 505 S.E.2d at 158. I therefore dissent from the portion of the majority’s opinion finding no error in Defendant’s second-degree kidnapping conviction.