Court Opinion

ID: 9561829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:17:03.667644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:33.456262
License: Public Domain

Judge JOHNSON
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority opinion except for the part pertaining to the issue of defendant’s right to a jury instruction on larceny as a lesser included offense of armed robbery. To that part of the opinion, I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that, for purposes of defendant’s right to particular jury instructions, larceny is a lesser included offense of armed robbery. In so holding the majority attempts to distinguish the facts sub judice from the facts in State v. Murray, 310 N.C. 541, 313 S.E. 2d 523 (1984), State v. Beatty, 306 N.C. 491, 293 S.E. 2d 760 (1982), and State v. Revelle, 301 N.C. 153, 270 S.E. 2d 476 (1980).
Although I agree with the majority’s reasoning, I am compelled by the clear language in the cases supra to dissent. Our Supreme Court said most emphatically in jReve lie, supra, at 163, 270 S.E. 2d at 482, that armed robbery and larceny “are legally separate, distinct crimes and [neither] of the offenses is a lesser included offense of the other.” (Emphasis supplied.) This mandate was reiterated in Murray, supra, at 548-49, 313 S.E. 2d at 529, and Beatty, supra, at 500-01, 293 S.E. 2d at 766-67. Nowhere in any of *93these three cases does the Court limit the scope of its holdings to claims of double jeopardy or failure to give particular instructions. Although the Court did not explicitly overrule its long line of cases holding larceny to be a lesser included offense of armed robbery, Murray, Beatty and Revelle implicitly overrule those previous cases. Therefore, I must dissent.