Court Opinion

ID: 9584552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:49:56.927957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:08:27.764439
License: Public Domain

*524Justice Frye
dissenting.
Three questions were contested at trial: 1) who committed the robbery at The Scotchman, 2) who committed the attempted robbery at the Petro Mart, and 3) whether the offenses were committed with a firearm or other dangerous weapon so as to constitute armed robbery as opposed to common law robbery. The State’s evidence tended to show that defendant was the person who committed both offenses and that both were committed with a firearm or other dangerous weapon. Defendant’s evidence tended to show that he was not the person who committed the offenses and that he neither owned nor “messed with” firearms.
The trial judge correctly instructed the jury that the burden of proof was upon the State to satisfy the jury as to defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of the offenses charged. On the first two questions, the jury rejected defendant’s alibi defense and concluded that defendant was in fact the person who committed the offenses. The trial judge, however, decided the third question as a matter of law, instructing the jury as to the mandatory presumption arising where a defendant uses an implement that appears to be a firearm or other dangerous weapon and there is no evidence to the contrary, rather than leaving the question of whether the offenses were committed with a firearm or other dangerous weapon to the jury. See State v. Allen, 317 N.C. 119, 343 S.E.2d 893 (1986), and State v. Joyner, 312 N.C. 779, 324 S.E.2d 841 (1985).
As Chief Justice Exum wrote for a unanimous court in Allen:
Neither Thompson, Alston nor Joyner stands for the proposition that the state in armed robbery cases is relieved from the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the instrument used is in fact a firearm or dangerous weapon which in fact does endanger or threaten the life of the victim. All of these cases deal with whether the evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to make these essential findings. Joyner, however, does permit the state to rely on a mandatory presumption that an instrument which appears to the victim to be a firearm or other dangerous weapon capable of threatening or endangering the victim’s life is in law such a weapon when and only when there is no evidence in the case to the contrary.
Allen, 317 N.C. at 125, 343 S.E.2d at 897 (emphasis added).
*525There was some evidence to the contrary in the instant case, and the jury should have been permitted to consider it in determining whether the offenses committed were armed robbery and attempted armed robbery as opposed to common law robbery and attempted common law robbery. Here, as in Allen, “the jury should have been instructed that they could, but were not required to, infer from the instrument’s appearance to the victim that it was a firearm or other dangerous weapon.” Id. at 126, 343 S.E.2d at 897. As in Allen, the instructions here “effectively gave the state the benefit of a mandatory presumption when it was entitled only to the benefit of a permissive inference.” Id.
I agree with the State that the evidence in this case was clearly sufficient to permit the jury to find defendant guilty of armed robbery and attempted armed robbery.
However, in the subject case, the defendant in presenting an alibi defense, took the stand to testify in his own behalf that he did not “mess with guns.” Moreover, on cross-examination, when the prosecutor asked the defendant, “Mr. Williams, did you testify you don’t have a gun, you don’t mess with guns?,” the defendant replied, “Correct. I don’t own a gun.” This evidence, when coupled with the evidence that neither of the victims ever saw a gun, is evidence that the defendant did not have a gun. It was therefore error to give the mandatory presumption instruction in this case.
State v. Williams, 108 N.C. App. 295, 301, 423 S.E.2d 333, 337 (1992) (Wynn, J., dissenting). The evidence that defendant did not own a gun, standing alone, would not suffice, for defendant could have committed the offense with a borrowed or stolen gun. The additional evidence that he did not “mess with guns,” however, was evidence from which the jury could reasonably infer that he did not use or have a gun on this occasion. Thus, I agree with Judge Wynn’s dissenting opinion. The case was for the jury, not the judge.
For the reasons stated herein, I must respectfully dissent.
Chief Justice EXUM and Justice WHICHARD join in this dissenting opinion.