Category: Crimes and Elements

After State v. Singleton, 386 N.C. 183 (2024), an indictment is not rendered facially invalid by failure to allege all the elements of a crime. One issue that remains unresolved is the consequence of failure to allege the State’s theory. Two post-Singleton cases decided last year found reversible error when the trial court instructed the jury on a theory not alleged in the indictment. See State v. Wilson, 910 S.E.2d 407 (N.C. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2024); State v. Little, 296 N.C. App. 424 (2024). More recently, in State v. Tate, No. COA24-450 (N.C. Ct. App. June 18, 2025), the Court of Appeals cited Singleton in support of its conclusion that the trial court did not err by instructing the jury on a theory that was not alleged in the indictment. This post examines the opinion in Tate.

The defendant in State v. Meadows, No. COA24-149 (N.C. Ct. App. May 7, 2025), was convicted of murder based on evidence that he and two other men broke into the victim’s home and shot the victim to death. Despite evidence that the defendant was not alone, the trial court refused to instruct on acting in concert. During closing argument, however, the prosecutor told the jury that the State need not prove the defendant “actually fired the shot that actually killed the victim. If he committed one act that contributed to the victim’s death, he is just as guilty as everybody else.” This argument, the Court of Appeals said, was improper. This post examines the opinion in Meadows.

Author’s Note: The Court of Appeals withdrew the State v. Watlington decision—on which this post is partially based—on April 7, 2025 and reissued the decision on April 16, 2025. The relevant section of this post has been modified from its original.

It has long been held that the allowable unit of prosecution for an offense is within the discretion of the legislature. See, e.g., Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1955).  When the legislature does not clearly express legislative intent, the court must determine the allowable unit of prosecution. State v. Smith, 323 N.C. 439 (1988).

North Carolina courts have resolved issues related to units of prosecution in some contexts—including kidnapping, possession of firearms, and theft crimes—while there are questions that remain unanswered in other contexts. Some answers are clearer and more direct than others. I previously wrote a bulletin reviewing case law on permissible units of prosecution for certain offenses against the person, possession offenses, and theft offenses. Since then, the courts have specified units of prosecution for a few more offenses. This post provides more insight into those offenses and reviews the rule of lenity in navigating the unresolved.

Author’s Note: This post has been modified from its original based on the reissuance of the opinion on April 16, 2025. 

Earlier last month, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Watlington, COA23-1106, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2025). Among other issues, in its decision the Court addressed an open question: what is the unit of prosecution for a hit and run? May the defendant be charged once for leaving the scene of a crash that causes injury, or instead may a separate charge be issued for each person injured? (Shea Denning wrote about that issue and the framework for analysis in 2014, noting then that the question had not been directly addressed by our appellate courts). We now have an answer: the unit of prosecution is the number of crashes from which the defendant fled, not the number of people injured. Read on for further details.

I have been covering developments around the legalization of hemp in North Carolina since 2018. Never did I suspect then that I would still be working on the topic all this time later, but here we are. My last post on In Re: J.B.P. covered the then most recent developments around probable cause and the odor of cannabis. That opinion was withdrawn and has yet to reissue, but subsequent cases have basically affirmed the logic on which the case was decided. This month, the Court of Appeals released State v. Ruffin, COA24-276,  ___ N.C. App. ___ (March 5, 2025), weighing in on evidentiary challenges to opinion evidence identifying a substance as marijuana, as well as on jury instructions for marijuana cases. This post examines these and other recent legal developments impacting the state’s criminal cannabis law. Read on for the details.

The castle doctrine statute, G.S. 14-51.2, provides that it is presumptively reasonable for the lawful occupant of a home or motor vehicle to respond to an intruder with deadly force. State v. Phillips, 386 N.C. 513, 527 (2024). Two recent decisions examine the scope of this protection. In State v. Carwile, No. COA23-885 (N.C. Ct. App. Dec. 17, 2024), the Court of Appeals held that the castle doctrine did not apply when the defendant was outside his home. By contrast, in State v. Williams, COA24-50 (N.C. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2024), the Court of Appeals held the castle doctrine did apply though the defendant was outside of his car. This post seeks to harmonize Carwile and Williams.

North Carolina is a bilateral conspiracy jurisdiction. Defining conspiracy as a combination of two or more persons to do an unlawful thing means that if the only other participant is an undercover officer or an informant – that is, one who lacks criminal intent – then there is no conspiracy. Under a new statute effective December 1, 2024, however, it is no defense to conspiracy to commit money laundering that the person with whom the defendant is alleged to have conspired was a law enforcement officer or acting at the direction of a law enforcement officer. G.S. 14-118.8(i). The new statute thus adopts the unilateral approach to conspiracy taken by the Model Penal Code and some other states. This post considers the new statute and its innovation in the law of conspiracy.

The defendant presented competent evidence tending to show that he was acting in self-defense when he shot Raquan Neal, the Court of Appeals recently said in State v. Myers, No. COA24-435 (N.C. Ct. App. Nov. 19, 2024), and the trial court’s failure to instruct on self-defense was error. Reciting both the common law and the statutory test for self-defense, the opinion in Myers seems to represent a straightforward application of settled law – except for one thing. The defendant “testified he was not trying to kill Neal.” Myers, Slip Op. 3. Under the common law, a defendant was not privileged to use deadly force unless he believed at the time that it was necessary to kill his assailant. Prior cases found no error in the trial court’s denying an instruction on self-defense when the defendant thus disavowed the requisite intent. This post considers the opinion in Myers.

Each year the School of Government publishes new and revised pattern jury instructions for civil, criminal, and motor vehicle negligence cases. Those instructions are created and compiled by the North Carolina Conference of Superior Court Judges Committee on Pattern Jury Instructions. The 2024 updates are available for free download here. Among this year’s changes are new instructions for crimes recently defined by the state legislature, including patient brokering, street takeovers, new death by distribution offenses, the new misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, and elevated versions of the offense of breaking or entering a motor vehicle. Several existing criminal instructions also have been amended, including the instruction for substituting alternate jurors after deliberations begin (N.C.P.I. – Crim. 100.40). That instruction now includes a note well advising of the ruling in State v. Chambers, 292 N.C. App. 459 (2024), and the stay entered by the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Singleton was supposed to make things simpler. As previously reported, in that case our Supreme Court attempted to eliminate some “obsolete technicalities” of the common law by abrogating the jurisdictional indictment rule, whereby a defective pleading deprives the trial court of jurisdiction. My colleague Danny Spiegel called it a sea change. The Court of Appeals decided two cases in September that illustrate continuing complexity in this area. In State v. Pierce, COA23-348 (N.C. Ct. App. Sept. 3, 2024), the court held the trial court did not lack jurisdiction to accept a pro se defendant’s waiver of indictment, despite a statutory prohibition on such uncounseled waiver. And in State v. Wilkins, COA23-839 (N.C. Ct. App. Sept. 17, 2024), the court found the trial court lacked jurisdiction due to a fatally defective indictment. This post considers those two cases.