Court Opinion

ID: 9614034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:21:49.237378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:03:00.631113
License: Public Domain

WYNN, Judge
concurring in the result.
I agree with the result reached by the majority opinion but write separately to discuss a conflicting rationale followed by the Ohio Court of Appeals but not yet adopted in North Carolina.
As noted by the majority, this Court has previously recognized our Supreme Court’s holdings with respect to collateral estoppel in the criminal context:
The mere fact that the same evidence was introduced in a prior criminal trial does not make a later criminal trial subject to collateral estoppel. Rather, the determinative factor in a collateral estoppel defense is whether it is absolutely necessary to a defendant’s conviction for the second offense that the second jury find against that defendant on an issue which was decided in his favor by the prior jury.
State v. Solomon, 117 N.C. App. 701, 704-05, 453 S.E.2d 201, 204 (quoting State v. Edwards, 310 N.C. 142, 145, 310 S.E.2d 610, 613 (1984)), disc. review denied, 340 N.C. 117, 456 S.E.2d 325 (1995).
*123Our opinion in Solomon is controlling in this case and supports the majority’s conclusion that collateral estoppel does not apply here. However, in State v. Green, No. 83-05-046, 1983 Ohio App. LEXIS 13969 (unpublished, Ohio Ct. App., Dec. 12, 1983), a case very similar to the present case and cited by the trial court judge, the Ohio Court of Appeals applied different reasoning and found that collateral estoppel applied to bar a later prosecution.
In Green, the defendant was indicted on two counts of theft for writing checks payable to himself on a decedent’s account. Id. at *8. Count I was dismissed on the defendant’s motion, and Count II went to trial, where the judge found that the State failed to prove that the defendant obtained control over the property with an intent to deprive the owner, an element that was also an element of Count I. Id. at *8-*9.
The Green court concluded that since the State failed to prove in the first trial that the defendant obtained control over the property with the intent to deprive the owner, it was precluded from trying to prove the same factual issue in a subsequent trial. Id. at *10-*11. Additionally, the court noted that the two counts involved the same property (money in a bank account), the same parties, and the same essential issues. Id. at *11.
Similarly, this case involves the same parties, same issues, same bank account, and the same conduct. At the first trial, the judge specifically found that the State failed to offer sufficient evidence to prove two elements of obtaining property by false pretenses: (1) that Defendant unlawfully obtained money and (2) that Defendant did not have permission to cash or convert the checks. The elements that the State failed to prove in the first trial are also elements of the second group of ten counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. Under the reasoning of Green, the State failed to prove two elements of obtaining property by false pretenses at the first trial and would therefore be estopped from trying to prove the same factual issue in a later trial. However, because Solomon is the controlling case in North Carolina, I must concur in the result reached by the majority.