State Carolina v. Carter

• Decision Date: 21 June 2011
• Docket Number: No. COA10–974.,COA10–974.
• Citation: 711 S.E.2d 515
• Parties: STATE of North Carolinav.Keith Antione CARTER, Defendant.
• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals

711 S.E.2d 515

STATE of North Carolina

v.Keith Antione CARTER, Defendant.

No. COA10–974.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

June 21, 2011.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 12 March 2010 by Judge William Z. Wood, Jr. in Forsyth County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 22 March 2011.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Charles E. Reece, for the State.

Appellate Defender Staples Hughes, by Assistant Appellate Defender Daniel R. Pollitt, for defendant-appellant.

HUNTER, Robert C., Judge.

Defendant Keith Antione Carter appeals his second-degree murder conviction. After careful review, we find no error.

Facts

At trial, the State presented evidence tending to establish the following facts: Late in the evening of 22 February 2007 and into the early morning hours of 23 February 2007, several Forsyth County deputies were working off-duty as security at the Red Rooster nightclub in Winston–Salem. Around 2:00 a.m., several fights broke out inside the nightclub. As the deputies and bouncers tried to stop the fights, someone threw a chair which hit several people, and the fighting escalated. The deputies then began using pepper spray to break up the groups of people fighting and to force them outside. As the crowd—consisting of roughly 400 to 500 people—moved outside, at least 30 separate fights broke out in the parking lot.

Defendant, who had gone to the Red Rooster to meet his friend Brandon Horne, was involved in one of the fights and was hit in the face, leaving “[a] big gash under his eye.” When the deputies began using pepper spray, defendant and Mr. Horne went outside and began walking to defendant's car. When Mr. Horne pointed out that defendant's cut was “bleeding pretty bad,” defendant looked at his cut in his car's rearview mirror and got upset. Defendant then reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. He walked around to the front passenger's side, retrieved the “clip” from the glove box, loaded the clip, and “rack[ed]” a round in the chamber. Yelling “Fuck it. Who wants some?,” defendant fired several shots “towards the crowd” in the parking lot. After “spraying” the crowd, defendant quickly got into his car and drove off “really fast.”

Sergeant Howard Plouff, who was one of at least four Winston–Salem police officers who had responded to the deputies' call for emergency assistance at the Red Rooster, was hit in the neck by one of the bullets from defendant's gun. The bullet entered Sgt. Plouff's body under his jaw, “cut[ting]” his carotid artery and his jugular vein, “fractur[ing]” his spine, and “destroy [ing]” part of his spinal cord. Sgt. Plouff was rushed to the hospital, where he died from the injuries resulting from the gunshot wound.

In the course of investigating Sgt. Plouff's death, Detective Stan Nieves learned that defendant may have been at the Red Rooster on 22–23 February 2007. Detective Nieves contacted defendant on 27 February 2007 and defendant agreed to come down to the police station to be interviewed. Because defendant was having problems with his car, two detectives picked him up from his mother's residence and defendant voluntarily went with the detectives to the police station. After being interviewed for several hours, defendant gave a tape recorded statement in which he stated that he was angry after being injured in the fight inside the nightclub, and that he went outside to his car, got out his handgun, loaded it, and fired five or six times “straight up” into the air.

At the conclusion of the interview, defendant was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Sgt. Plouff. A superceding indictment was later issued, alleging, among others, the aggravating factor that the murder was committed against a law enforcement officer while the officer was engaged in the performance of his official duties. Defendant was also charged with one count of felony engaging in a riot while possessing a handgun and one count of misdemeanor engaging in a riot.¹ Prior to trial, defendant filed a motion to suppress his statement to the police on the basis that the statement was obtained in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights. After conducting a suppression hearing, the trial court denied defendant's motion. At the close of the State's evidence at trial, defendant moved to dismiss all charges against him. The trial court denied the motion. After electing not to present any evidence in his defense, defendant renewed his motion to dismiss. The trial court denied this motion as well.

The jury found defendant guilty of second-degree murder, felony engaging in a riot while in possession of a handgun, and misdemeanor engaging in a riot. The jury also found the aggravating circumstance that the murder was committed against a law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of his official duties. The trial court sentenced defendant to a presumptive-range sentence of six to eight months imprisonment on the felony riot conviction, followed by an aggravated sentence of 196 to 245 months imprisonment on the second-degree murder charge. Defendant gave notice of appeal in open court.

I. Motion to Suppress

Defendant first contends that the trial court erred in denying his pre-trial motion to suppress the statement he made to detectives at the police station. Because, defendant argues, the statement was obtained as a result of a custodial interrogation conducted without his having been advised of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), the statement should have been suppressed. As defendant does not challenge any of the trial court's findings of fact on appeal, the only question for review is whether those findings support the court's conclusion of law that “[d]efendant was not in custody” at the time of his statements to the detectives. In re J.D.B., 363 N.C. 664, 668, 686 S.E.2d 135, 137–38 (2009).

Pertinent here, the United States Supreme Court has emphasized that

“[p]olice officers are not required to administer Miranda warnings to everyone whom they question. Nor is the requirement of warnings to be imposed simply because the questioning takes place in the station house, or because the questioned person is one whom the police suspect. Miranda warnings are required only where there has been such a restriction on a person's freedom as to render him ‘in custody.’ ”

Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 714, 50 L.Ed.2d 714, 719 (1977) (per curiam). Rather, the “definitive inquiry” in determining whether a person is “in custody” for Miranda purposes is whether, based on the totality of the circumstances, there was a “formal arrest or a restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest.” State v. Gaines, 345 N.C. 647, 662, 483 S.E.2d 396, 405 (1997) (citing Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994) (per curiam)).

This determination involves “an objective test, based upon a reasonable person standard, and is ‘to be applied on a case-by-case basis considering all the facts and circumstances.’ ” State v. Hall, 131 N.C.App. 427, 432, 508 S.E.2d 8, 12 (1998) (quoting State v. Medlin, 333 N.C. 280, 291, 426 S.E.2d 402, 407 (1993)), aff'd per curiam, 350 N.C. 303, 513 S.E.2d 561 (1999). While “no single factor controls the determination of whether an individual is ‘ in custody’ for purposes of Miranda[,]” State v. Garcia, 358 N.C. 382, 397, 597 S.E.2d 724, 737 (2004), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 1156, 125 S.Ct. 1301, 161 L.Ed.2d 122 (2005), our appellate courts have “considered such factors as whether a suspect is told he or she is free to leave, whether the suspect is handcuffed, whether the suspect is in the presence of uniformed officers, and the nature of any security around the suspect,” State v. Waring, 364 N.C. 443, 471, 701 S.E.2d 615, 633 (2010) (internal citations omitted).

Here, at the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court entered its order orally from the bench, finding that Detective Nieves went to defendant's mother's house around 3:00 p.m. on 27 February 2007, where he was told that defendant was not at home. Detective Nieves left a business card with defendant's sister and asked her to have defendant contact him. Around 4:15 p.m., defendant called Detective Nieves, who explained to defendant that the police were investigating the shooting at the Red Rooster nightclub and were “interviewing everybody who had been at the scene.” When defendant told Detective Nieves that he had been at the nightclub on the night of 22–23 February 2007, Detective Nieves “asked [defendant] if he would come down to the police station to give a statement....” Defendant told Detective Nieves that there was “something wrong” with his car and that he was unable to come down to the police station at that time. Detective Nieves offered to send someone to “pick [defendant] up at his house,” and defendant agreed to being picked up.

Detective Nieves called Detectives Phillip Cox and B.G. Kirk and asked them to pick up defendant and bring him to the police station. When they arrived and knocked on the door, defendant came outside, talked briefly with Detectives Cox and Kirk, who were in plain clothes, and then went back inside unaccompanied to get his wallet and keys. Defendant was neither searched nor patted down before getting into the passenger seat of the detectives' unmarked Honda Accord. While driving to the police station, defendant was told that “he could leave at any time” and that “he was not under arrest.” When they arrived at the station, they parked in the public parking lot in front of the station and entered the building through the public entrance rather than through the “secure entrance” in the back. While unlocking the door allowing access to the offices and interview rooms, Detective Kirk told defendant that “the door only locks from the outside, and if he...