Opinion
No. COA14–716.
2014-12-16
STATE of North Carolina v. Clayton Arthur JORDAN.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney General James A. Wellons, for the State.Devereux & Banzhoff, PLLC, by Andrew B. Banzhoff, for Defendant.
Appeal by defendant from judgments entered 15 January 2014 by Judge Gary M. Gavenus in Buncombe County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 5 November 2014. Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney General James A. Wellons, for the State. Devereux & Banzhoff, PLLC, by Andrew B. Banzhoff, for Defendant.
ERVIN, Judge.
Defendant Clayton Arthur Jordan appeals from judgments entered based upon his convictions for voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. On appeal, Defendant argues that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury concerning the law of accident. After careful consideration of Defendant's challenge to the trial court's judgments in light of the record and the applicable law, we conclude that the trial court's judgments should remain undisturbed.
I. Factual Background
A. Substantive Facts
On 1 August 2012, Brandon Vasilauskas was engaged to and living with Lauren Farmer in an apartment located on Bent Creek Ranch Road in Buncombe County. In light of their decision to move to Greensboro on 3 August 2012, Mr. Vasilauskas and Ms. Farmer held a going-away party at their apartment on the night of 1 August. Defendant, who worked with Mr. Vasilauskas at an Olive Garden restaurant, had been invited to attend the party and arrived at the residence of Mr. Vasilauskas and Ms. Farmer at approximately 1:00 or 1:30 a.m. on 2 August 2012.
A few minutes before 3:00 a.m., Ms. Farmer was approached by Isaias Acevedo, who was looking for a marker. After providing Mr. Acevedo with a marker, Ms. Farmer followed him outside, where she observed Mr. Vasilauskas lying on the ground while Mr. Acevedo drew on his face. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Vasilauskas jumped up, punched Mr. Acevedo, and chased Mr. Acevedo, who ran away.
The other guests attempted to restrain Mr. Vasilauskas, who was visibly upset about what had been done to him. When Mr. Vasilauskas' sister, Nicole Anders, approached her brother in an attempt to calm him down, Mr. Vasilauskas told Ms. Anders to leave him alone and pushed her away, an action that caused her to trip over a grill and fall down.
After Ms. Anders fell, Ben Anders, who is married to Ms. Anders, approached Mr. Vasilauskas and told him, “Don't push my wife. Calm down.” Mr. Vasilauskas responded to this comment by “chest-bumping” Mr. Anders. As Mr. Vasilauskas yelled, “Why is everybody f–––ing with me? I'm going to f—k somebody up,” Defendant, who was standing behind Mr. Anders, said, “Let me get him.”
The evidence contained in the trial record concerning the events that followed the making of this comment was conflicting, with the discrepancies between the various witnesses including disagreements over the identity of the person who initiated the physical confrontation between Defendant and Mr. Vasilauskas and other subjects. According to his trial testimony, upon which Defendant relies in support of the contention that he has advanced for our consideration on appeal, Defendant pulled a pocket knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and held it in his right hand by his side for the purpose of letting Mr. Vasilauskas know that he had a knife in his possession and that Mr. Vasilauskas needed to calm down. Defendant denied having pointed the knife in Mr. Vasilauskas' direction or having threatened him with it.
After observing Defendant's actions, Mr. Vasilauskas said, “It is my party, mother f–––er,” and began striking Defendant. In response, Defendant grabbed Mr. Vasilauskas' shirt with his left hand and hit him three times with his right hand, with which he was holding the open-bladed pocket knife, before the two men fell to the ground and rolled around while wrestling with each other. As Ms. Farmer attempted to pull Defendant off Mr. Vasilauskas, she received a gash caused by Defendant's knife that required eleven stitches and left Ms. Farmer with a diminished ability to feel sensations in the injured hand.
Before hearing Ms. Farmer scream, Defendant attempted to punch Mr. Vasilauskas again. However, upon hearing Ms. Farmer's cry of pain, Defendant rose from the ground. As Mr. Vasilauskas got up, he noticed that he was bleeding and asked Defendant if Defendant had stabbed him. In reply, Defendant told Mr. Vasilauskas to lie down, helped Mr. Vasilauskas to the ground with assistance provided by other guests, removed his own shirt, and used it to put pressure on the site from which Mr. Vasilauskas was bleeding. In addition, Defendant and his girlfriend, Devon Clarke, went inside to get an ice tray, wrapped the ice in Defendant's shirt upon returning to the exterior of the apartment, and placed it on Mr. Vasilauskas' wound.
Deputy Joseph Eller of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office received a call shortly after 3:00 a.m. concerning a stabbing and went to the apartment at which Mr. Vasilauskas and Ms. Farmer resided. After his arrival, Defendant approached Deputy Eller and told him that his friend was hurt. When Deputy Eller asked if Defendant had a weapon, Defendant took a knife from his pocket and dropped it on the ground.
After their arrival at the scene of the altercation, emergency medical service personnel evaluated Mr. Vasilauskas and took him to the hospital, where he died later that morning. According to Dr. Donald Jason, a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Mr. Vasilauskas' body on 3 August 2012, sharp-force wounds were present on Mr. Vasilauskas' chest, upper shoulders, and left arm and bruises were present around Mr. Vasilauskas' mouth and on his chest. Most importantly, Dr. Jason found a stab wound to Mr. Vasilauskas' upper left chest that measured about two inches in width and about three and a half inches in depth. The stab wound in question penetrated through the third rib, having entered Mr. Vasilauskas' body above and toward the center of his chest when measured from the left nipple, severed the internal mammary artery just inside the chest plate, and cut the upper portion of Mr. Vasilauskas' left lung. As a result of this stab wound, Mr. Vasilauskas' lung was collapsed and eleven or twelve ounces of blood were present in his chest, with even more blood having probably been lost in the chest cavity. At the conclusion of the autopsy procedure, Dr. Jason concluded that Mr. Vasilauskas had died as the result of internal bleeding stemming from the stab wound to his chest and that the blade of the knife that had been taken from Defendant at the scene of the altercation was consistent with the wounds that Mr. Vasilauskas had sustained.
B. Procedural History
On 15 August 2013, the Buncombe County grand jury returned bills of indictment charging Defendant with voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. The charges against Defendant came on for trial before the trial court and a jury at the 6 January 2014 criminal session of Buncombe County Superior Court. On 15 January 2014, the jury returned verdicts finding Defendant guilty of both charges. At the conclusion of the ensuing sentencing hearing, the trial court entered judgments sentencing Defendant to 64 to 89 months imprisonment based upon his conviction for voluntary manslaughter and to a consecutive term of 25 to 42 months imprisonment based upon his conviction for assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, with the second of these two sentences being suspended and with Defendant being placed on supervised probation for a period of 30 months following his release from incarceration. Defendant noted an appeal to this Court from the trial court's judgments.
II. Substantive Legal Analysis
In his sole challenge to the trial court's judgments, Defendant contends that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury concerning the law of accident. More specifically, Defendant contends that the record contains sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable juror to believe that he should have been acquitted on the grounds of accident and that the trial court should have instructed the jury to the effect that, if the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendant's death did not result from an accident, it should return a verdict of not guilty. We do not find Defendant's argument persuasive.
Although Defendant has not expressly abandoned his right to challenge the trial court's refusal to deliver an accident instruction in the case in which he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, the request that Defendant made for the delivery of an accident instruction at trial was limited to the case in which he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and the argument advanced in Defendant's brief appears to us to be directed solely to that case. As a result, we construe the challenge to the trial court's judgments advanced in Defendant's brief before this Court as directed exclusively to the case in which Defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
A. Standard of Review
“The court is required to charge the jury as to the law upon all substantial features of the case arising upon the evidence, including all defenses presented by defendant's evidence.” State v. Davis, 66 N.C.App. 334, 336, 311 S.E.2d 311, 312 (1984). Thus, “[w]here the defendant's or the State's evidence when viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant discloses facts which are ‘legally sufficient’ to constitute a defense to the charged crime, the trial court must instruct the jury on the defense.” State v. Marshall, 105 N.C.App. 518, 522, 414 S.E.2d 95, 97, disc. review denied, 332 N.C. 150, 419 S.E.2d 576 (1992). However, “a trial judge should not give instructions to the jury which are not supported by the evidence produced at trial.” State v. Cameron, 284 N.C. 165, 171, 200 S.E.2d 186, 191 (1973), cert. denied, 418 U.S. 905, 94 S.Ct. 3195, 41 L.Ed.2d 1153 (1974). A trial court's refusal to deliver a jury instruction that the defendant requested at trial is subject to de novo review by this Court. State v. Osorio, 196 N.C.App. 458, 466, 675 S.E.2d 144, 149 (2009).
B. Appropriateness of Accident Instruction
A defendant is entitled to be acquitted of a homicide-related charge on the grounds of accident when the “defendant, without premeditation, intent or culpable negligence, commits acts which bring about the death of another.” State v. Turner, 330 N.C. 249, 262, 410 S.E.2d 847, 854 (1991). In view of the fact that the record is devoid of any evidence tending to show that Defendant intended to kill Mr. Vasilauskas with premeditation or deliberation, the relevant question for purposes of our review of the validity of Defendant's challenge to the trial court's judgments is whether there is any evidence that Defendant unintentionally caused Mr. Vasilauskas' death in the absence of culpable negligence, which “is such gross negligence or carelessness as ‘imports a thoughtless disregard of the consequences' or a ‘heedless indifference to the rights and safety of others.’ “ State v. Thompson, 118 N.C.App. 33, 36, 454 S.E.2d 271, 273 (quoting State v. Everhart, 291 N.C. 700, 702, 231 S.E.2d 604, 606 (1977)), disc. review denied, 340 N.C. 262, 456 S.E.2d 837 (1995).
A careful review of the record developed in the trial court demonstrates that there is no evidentiary support for Defendant's contention that the death of Mr. Vasilauskas resulted from an accident as that term is used in North Carolina homicide law. When taken in the light most favorable to Defendant, the record shows that Defendant acted with “a thoughtless disregard of the consequences” when he punched Mr. Vasilauskas numerous times using a hand in which he held an open-bladed knife. Defendant has not offered up any justification for continuing to hold an open-bladed knife in his hand while punching Mr. Vasilauskas despite the obvious risk that Defendant's conduct would result in the infliction of stab wounds, and none has occurred to us based on our own review of the record. As a result, Defendant's account of the events that led to the death of Mr. Vasilauskas provides no basis for a jury determination that Mr. Vasilauskas' death resulted from an accident.
Our conclusion to this effect has ample support in the reported decisions of this Court. In State v. Daniels, 87 N.C.App. 287, 288, 360 S.E.2d 470, 470 (1987), the defendant testified that the victim had knocked her to the ground after becoming angry with her. After the defendant told the victim that he would not have hit her in that way if the defendant had been a man, the victim dragged the defendant into the kitchen, removed a knife from a drawer, and handed it to the defendant, whom he instructed to “fight like a man .” Id. at 288, 360 S.E.2d at 470. At that point, the defendant “stuck at” the victim in an attempt “to get him away from me” and that, while she did not intend to stab or hurt the victim in any way, she “was pushing mainly at him.” Id. at 288, 360 S.E.2d at 470. In affirming the defendant's conviction for involuntary manslaughter, this Court stated that the testimony indicating that the victim's death “was caused by defendant inadvertently stabbing the victim in the chest while not attempting or intending to do so” constituted clear evidence “that the killing was the result of an act done in a culpable or criminally negligent way.” Id. at 289, 360 S.E.2d at 471. Similarly, in Davis, 66 N.C.App. at 335, 311 S.E.2d at 312, the defendant arrived home to find the victim in the apartment with his girlfriend, ordered the victim to leave, and struck the victim when he refused to do so. Id. at 335, 311 S.E.2d at 312. After a scuffle ensued, the defendant grabbed a knife from the counter
and as he came around with it, [the victim] grabbed the hand which defendant held the knife in. [The victim] tried to force the knife into defendant, who was trying to force the knife away. They bumped against cabinets as they struggled with the knife. Defendant testified further that he did not try to cut [the victim], he was only trying to protect himself and he does not know how [the victim] was stabbed.
Id. at 336, 311 S.E.2d at 312. In rejecting the defendant's argument that the trial court should have delivered an accident instruction, we stated that, even if one accepted the defendant's version of the events that led to the victim's death as true, “the conclusion is inescapable that the stab wounds nonetheless proximately resulted from the altercation brought on by the defendant, who was also the one who introduced the knife into the affray.” Id. at 337, 311 S.E.2d at 313. As a result, our decisions in Daniels and Davis establish that a defendant who introduces a knife into an altercation and keeps an open-bladed knife in his possession during that altercation is not entitled to be acquitted on accident-related grounds.
In seeking to persuade us to reach a different result, Defendant contends this case is virtually indistinguishable from State v. Fleming, 296 N.C. 559, 251 S.E.2d 430 (1979), in which the defendant testified that
he picked up the knife on impulse and had no intention of hurting [the victim]; that she stumbled and fell and when he tried to pick her up she kicked him and, having [regained] possession of the knife tried to cut him; that he put his legs across her for the sole purpose of holding her in place and, while attempting to ward off her blows, “he pushed the knife too hard and it hit her.”
Id. at 563, 251 S.E.2d at 432–33. Although the Supreme Court held that Defendant's testimony, if believed, would support an acquittal on accident-related grounds, id. at 564, 251 S.E.2d at 433, the facts at issue in Fleming are readily distinguishable from those at issue here. In Fleming, unlike this case, the defendant denied that he was holding the knife at the time that the stab wounds were inflicted and that, instead, he was warding off the victim's attacks when the stabbing occurred. Id. at 564, 251 S.E.2d at 432–33. In this case, on the other hand, Defendant made a conscious decision to enter into an altercation with Mr. Vasilauskas while carrying an open-bladed knife, which he continued to hold while he punched Mr. Vasilauskas. As a result, since we find no basis for the delivery of an accident instruction in this case, the trial court did not err by refusing to instruct the jury that it should acquit Defendant in the event that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Vasilaukas did not die as the result of an accident.
Although Defendant also relies on the Supreme Court's decision in State v. Patterson, 335 N.C. 437, 446–47, 439 S.E.2d 578, 584–85 (1994), we find that decision of limited usefulness given the fact that the victim's death occurred, according to the defendant, when he threw a shotgun, which discharged, onto a bed while the victim was packing and the Supreme Court's holding that the jury was effectively instructed concerning the effect of a determination that the victim's death was accidental.
III. Conclusion
Thus, for the reasons set forth above, we conclude that the trial court did not err by refusing to give Defendant's requested jury instruction concerning the law of accident. As a result, the trial court's judgments should, and hereby do, remain undisturbed.
AFFIRMED. Judges ELMORE and DAVIS concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).