State Of North Carolina v. Crudup, COA10-326
| Decision Date | 19 April 2011 |
| Docket Number | NO. COA10-326,COA10-326 |
| Court | Court of Appeal of North Carolina (US) |
| Parties | STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. DERRICK LAMONT CRUDUP, Defendant. Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney General Kay Linn Miller Hobart, for the State. Haral E. Carlin for defendant-appellant. GEER, Judge. |
An unpublished opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals does not constitute controlling legal authority. Citation is disfavored, but may be permitted in accordance with the provisions of Rule 30(e)(3) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.
Franklin County No. 08 CRS 52500
Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 17 June 2 009 by Judge Henry W. Hight, Jr. in Franklin County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 15 September 2010.
Defendant Derrick Lamont Crudup appeals from his conviction of second degree murder. Although defendant failed to object at trial, he argues on appeal that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of a photograph of the victim at the funeral home, in not intervening when the State referred to that photograph in the closing argument, and in also not intervening when the State argued that defendant "would just about say anything to save his neck." We hold that giventhe evidence, defendant has failed to demonstrate sufficient prejudice to warrant a new trial. We do not believe that the jury would likely have reached a different verdict in the absence of the photograph and the arguments. We also reject defendant's claim that the court erred in failing to find certain mitigating factors during sentencing because the court imposed a sentence in the presumptive range and was, therefore, not required to make such findings.
Facts
The State's evidence tended to show the following facts. On 24 September 2008, Darryl Collins was driving a four-wheeler and pulled out in front of a patrol car driven by Lieutenant William Mitchell of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department. Lieutenant Mitchell activated his lights and siren to pull Collins over, but Collins refused to stop. In his effort to flee, Collins drove his four-wheeler through defendant's mother's yard. Defendant was outside mowing his mother's lawn and saw Collins cut through the yard.
The next evening, at around 10:00 p.m., defendant went to Anderson Barber Shop for a haircut. While defendant was getting his hair cut, Collins arrived at the shop. Everything "seemed to be fine" between defendant and Collins until defendant brought up the four-wheeler incident. Defendant told Collins, "Don't[,] you know, ride through my mother's yard, tearing up the yard[,]" but Collins denied having driven the four-wheeler through the yard. The two menthen began fighting with Collins hitting defendant four or five times. As a result, defendant fell into a newsstand and sustained several cuts to his lip and forehead.
The barber intervened and escorted Collins to the door. As Collins left, he turned to defendant and said, "'Don't be here when I get back.'" The barber helped defendant clean up, and defendant drove away in his truck.
After the fight, Collins went to the home of his girlfriend, Stephanie Hilliard. Collins was upset and told Hilliard that he had just been in a fight with defendant. He also told her that defendant "had threatened him and said that he would treat him like a deer if he saw him or his cousin in his mother's yard again." Hilliard understood the threat to mean that defendant would "[s]hoot him."
Meanwhile, defendant drove to his fiancee's apartment and retrieved a.44 magnum gun he had purchased for deer hunting. Defendant's fiancee, Alissa Wiggins, attempted to stop defendant from leaving, but he took the keys to her car and drove off in her car rather than in his truck. After defendant left her home, Wiggins called 911 and reported:
Defendant drove in the direction of his mother's house, taking a route that went past the barber shop. He saw Collins standing by his car in the barber shop parking lot. Defendant hit his brakes and fired three or four shots at Collins from the car and drove away.
Defendant threw the gun into the woods, drove to Wiggins' mother's house, and parked behind the house. According to State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Lynn Gay, the car was not in Wiggins picked defendant up in his truck and drove him to his own mother's house, where he was subsequently apprehended around 3:00 a.m. Law enforcement officials found the truck "hidden behind the residence" where it could not be seen from the road--all the other cars at the house were parked in the driveway.
The officers who responded to the shooting found Collins' body by his car "just outside of the door, like it had fallen out of the door, face down." The officers discovered two bags of a green leafy substance under the driver's seat, two wads of money totaling $2,380.00 in Collins' pocket, and two cell phones, one of which was lying near the body. The officers also found a 12-gauge shotgunlocked in the trunk of Collins' vehicle, but they found no other gun near Collins.
On 13 October 2008, defendant was indicted for first degree murder. At trial, the medical examiner testified that Collins died from a single gunshot wound "to his back." The medical examiner explained that the bullet entered Collins' back on the right side and fractured a rib. From there, the bullet traveled through the lower lobe of Collins' right lung and diaphragm, struck the edge of the liver, and went into the sac that surrounds the heart. It injured the right side of the heart and exited the left chest. Collins suffered "bleeding and major damage to the internal organs" such that he could only have survived for a few seconds to a couple of minutes.
Defendant testified on his own behalf at trial. He admitted that he shot Collins, but claimed he did so in self defense. According to defendant, as Collins left the barber shop, he told defendant, " " which defendant took to mean "a gun, or what not." Defendant knew that Collins had a "pretty bad reputation" in the community and that he "had a bad reputation of toting a gun, because [he] knew [Collins] had knocked his kids [sic] momma's teeth out with a gun." He also knew Collins "ran with bad guys" and had been banned from the State Employees' Credit Union. Defendant explained that he was concerned because Collins knew where his mother and childrenlived, as well as where defendant and Wiggins drove, and he "knew that [he] had to get--you know, protect [himself] from him if [he] had another run in with him."
Defendant further explained that after he picked up his gun, he chose the "quickest" route to go check on his mother, which meant driving past the barber shop again. As he passed the barber shop, he saw Collins was back. Collins was standing outside his car, and defendant claimed that Collins appeared to have a gun in his hand. Defendant testified:
[A]t the time, I hit [sic] brakes, and I couldn't turn away, so I couldn't back up, and I was just panicked, and he was outside--like outside of the car with something. It seemed to be a gun, to me, in his hand, and I--at the time, turned, fired to there, because he had--I knew that he was a bad boy. I knew that he told me... if I was there when he come back that he had something for me. And so, I just--at the time I figured that I had to defend myself from him, because it wasn't no--I didn't think of no police, and he was there, and knew that he meant business.
When defendant was asked why he did not just drive away, defendant responded, Defendant said that he fired three times and sped away.
The jury found defendant guilty of second degree murder. The trial court sentenced defendant to a presumptive-range term of 189 to 236 months imprisonment. Defendant timely appealed to this Court.
Discussion
Defendant first argues that the trial court erred in allowing the State to introduce a photograph of Collins at the funeral home. Defendant contends that this photograph, introduced while Collins' mother was on the stand, had no probative value and was used solely to unfairly inflame the passions of the jury in violation of his federal and state constitutional rights.
Because defendant did not object to the admission of the photograph at trial, he asks that the Court review for plain error. As the Supreme Court has explained:
"[T]he plain error rule... is always to be applied cautiously and only in the exceptional case where, after reviewing the entire record, it can be said the claimed error is a fundamental error, something so basic, so prejudicial, so lacking in its elements that justice cannot have been done, or where [the error] is grave error which amounts to a denial of a fundamental right of the accused, or the error has resulted in a miscarriage of justice or in the denial to appellant of a fair trial or where the error is such as to seriously affect the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings or where it can be fairly said the... mistake had a probable impact on the jury's finding that the defendant was guilty."
State v. Odom, 307 N.C. 655, 660, 300 S.E.2d 375, 378 (1983) (quoting United States v. McCaskill, 676 F.2d 995, 1002 (4th Cir.), cert, denied, 459 U.S. 1018, 74 L. Ed. 2d 513, 103 S....
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