Court Opinion

ID: 9582651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:29:50.497188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:05.614587
License: Public Domain

LEVINSON, Judge,
concurring with separate opinion.
I concur in the majority opinion but write separately to express the reasons misdemeanor assault on a government official is not a lesser included offense of malicious conduct by a prisoner.
A defendant “is entitled to an instruction on a lesser included offense if the evidence would permit a jury rationally to find him guilty of the lesser offense and acquit him of the greater.” State v. Leazer, 353 N.C. 234, 237, 539 S.E.2d 922, 924 (2000) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “North Carolina has adopted a *377definitional test for determining whether a crime is in fact a lesser offense that merges with the greater offense.” State v. Kemmerlin, 356 N.C. 446, 475, 573 S.E.2d 870, 890 (2002) (citation omitted). “All of the essential elements of the lesser crime must also be essential elements included in the greater crime. If the lesser crime has an essential element which is not completely covered by the greater crime, it is not a lesser included offense.” Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Assault on a government official is defined by N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(4) (2003) as follows:
[A]ny person who commits any assault, assault and battery, or affray is guilty of a Class A1 misdemeanor if, in the course of the assault, assault and battery, or affray, he or she . . . [a]ssaults an officer or employee of the State or any political subdivision of the State, when the officer or employee is discharging or attempting to discharge his official duties[.]
Thus, the essential elements of the crime are: (1) an assault (2) on a government official in the actual or attempted discharge of his duties. “There is no statutory definition of assault in North Carolina, and the crime of assault is governed by common law rules.” State v. Mitchell, 358 N.C. 63, 69, 592 S.E.2d 543, 547 (2004) (citation and quotation marks omitted). Our Supreme Court has defined assault as “an overt act or an attempt, or the unequivocal appearance of an attempt, with force and violence, to do some immediate physical injury to the person of another, which show of force or menace of violence must be sufficient to put a person of reasonable firmness in fear of immediate bodily harm.” Id. at 69-70; 592 S.E.2d at 547 (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Malicious conduct by a prisoner is defined in N.C.G.S. § 14-258.4 (2003) as follows:
Any person in the custody of the Department of Correction, the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, any law enforcement officer, or any local confinement facility . . . , including persons pending trial, appellate review, or presentence diagnostic evaluation, who knowingly and willfully throws, emits, or causes to be used as a projectile, bodily fluids or excrement at a person who is an employee of the State or a local government while the employee is in the performance of the employee’s duties is guilty of a Class F felony.
*378Thus, the essential elements of this offense are: (1) a person in “custody”, (2) who knowingly and willfully, (3) throws, emits, or causes to be used as a projectile, (4) bodily fluids or excrement, (5) at a government employee in the performance of his duties.
Careful analysis of these different offenses reveals that they contain different elements. Malicious conduct by a prisoner includes numerous elements that are not part of assault on a government employee, to wit: custody of a person, a “knowing and willful” mens rea standard, and the use of bodily fluid or excrement directed “at” a government employee. Misdemeanor assault on a government official includes at least one element that malicious conduct by a prisoner does not: the actions of the perpetrator must be such as to place a person of reasonable firmness in imminent fear of bodily injury. Compare State v. Johnson, 264 N.C. 598, 599-600, 142 S.E.2d 151, 153 (1965) (discussing reasonable fear element of assault), with G.S. § 14-258.4 (including no such element).1 As these crimes each contain different elements, one cannot be a lesser included offense of the other. Kemmerlin, 356 N.C. at 475, 573 S.E.2d at 890.
The divergence between these two offenses is underscored by the fact that a defendant can be guilty of malicious conduct by a prisoner without committing misdemeanor assault on a government official. For example, a prisoner could throw bodily fluids or excrement “at” a prison guard under circumstances where no reasonable person in the guard’s position would fear that the contaminant would actually touch him, either because the prisoner is restrained and clearly unable to throw the substance with sufficient force to reach the guard, or because the guard was not in a position to observe the conduct. In this situation, the inmate may be guilty of malicious conduct by a prisoner without being guilty of misdemeanor assault on a government official. This is so because G.S. § 14-258.4 requires only that a bodily fluid or excrement be thrown “at” a government official, whereas G.S. § 14-33(c)(4) requires that the official either be touched by the instrument of assault or reasonably fear such a touching. Thus, a conviction for malicious conduct by a prisoner might be sustained without regard to whether the government employee had fear of a touching, while a conviction for assault on a government official would require such fear or an actual touching.
*379Such an outcome is entirely logical, as the legislature apparently intended to address separate evils with these different offenses. Assault on a government official criminalizes attacks against police officers and/or other government officials who are in the actual or attempted performance of their duties. Quite differently, malicious conduct by a prisoner proscribes a specific type of conduct that may or may not constitute an “assault”: throwing or emitting bodily fluids or excrement “at” a law enforcement officer and/or other government employee.
Accordingly, defendant was not entitled to have assault on a government official submitted to the jury because neither the evidence nor the law would support such an alternative verdict.

. Moreover, assault on a.government official may be committed when the officer is “attempting” to discharge his official duties, G.S. § 14-33(c)(4), while malicious conduct by prisoner can be sustained only when the employee is “in the performance” of his duties, G.S. § 14-258.4. This suggests another essential element in G.S. § 14-33(c)(4) that is not completely covered by G.S. § 14-258.4.