Court Opinion

ID: 9625544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:44:05.843146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:10.883792
License: Public Domain

Justice EDMUNDS
concurring in the result.
I respectfully disagree with the majority’s analysis of the instruction pertaining to serious personal injury. The majority correctly states that this Court discussed the requirements for proving serious personal injury based on mental or emotional harm in a first-degree *91rape case in State v. Boone, 307 N.C. 198, 297 S.E.2d 585 (1982), overruled on other grounds by State v. Richmond, 347 N.C. 412, 495 S.E.2d 677, cert. denied, 525 U.S. 843, 142 L. Ed. 2d 88 (1998), then refined that analysis in State v. Baker, 336 N.C. 58, 441 S.E.2d 551 (1994). In Baker, we set out two elements required to establish this type of serious' personal injury. “What is required is that the mental injury extend for some appreciable time beyond the incidents surrounding the rape and that it is a mental injury beyond that normally experienced in every forcible rape.” Id. at 64, 441 S.E.2d at 554. Unfortunately, the pattern jury instruction, citing Boone but not Baker, directs the trial court to instruct the jury that it need find only that defendant caused the injury and that the injury extended some appreciable time beyond the events making up the offense. 1 N.C.P.I. — Crim. 207.10 n.3 (2002). Thus, the pattern instruction has omitted the second prong required by Baker, that the harm exceed that found in other forcible rape cases. The Court of Appeals has perpetuated this error. See State v. Easterling, 119 N.C. App. 22, 40, 457 S.E.2d 913, 923, disc. rev. denied, 341 N.C. 422, 461 S.E.2d 762 (1995) (“We do not read Boone as placing an additional burden on the State to show a mental injury must be more than that normally experienced in every forcible rape in addition to showing the mental injury extended for some appreciable time, as defendant suggests.”).
The instruction in the case at bar, apparently following the pattern, required the State to establish that the injury was extensive in time, but it did not require the State to prove that the injury exceeded that inherent in all forcible rapes. To the contrary, the portion of the instruction quoted in the majority opinion can be read to suggest that serious mental injury arises as a result of all non-consensual vaginal intercourse. “Having chosen forcible first-degree rape as its theory of prosecution and having brought defendant to trial, the State was bound to prove all of the material elements of that charge . . . .” State v. Williams, 318 N.C. 624, 628, 350 S.E.2d 353, 356 (1986). The instruction given here erroneously relieved the State of its burden of proving a material element of forcible first-degree rape. Because of our disposition of other issues in this case, it is unnecessary to determine separately whether the error was prejudicial. Nevertheless, the pattern instruction should be corrected.