State v. Conley

• Decision Date: 03 April 2020
• Docket Number: No. 75PA19,75PA19
• Citation: 374 N.C. 209,839 S.E.2d 805
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Adam Warren CONLEY
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

374 N.C. 209

839 S.E.2d 805

STATE of North Carolina

v.Adam Warren CONLEY

No. 75PA19

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed April 3, 2020

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by John R. Green Jr., Special Deputy Attorney General, for the State-appellant.

Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by Emily Holmes Davis, Assistant Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellee.

DAVIS, Justice.

Subsection 14-269.2(b) of the North Carolina General Statutes prohibits the possession of firearms on school property. In the present case, defendant Adam Warren Conley was convicted and sentenced on five separate counts for violation of the statute based on an incident in which he was discovered on the grounds of a school in possession of five guns.

Based on our determination that N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) is ambiguous as to whether multiple convictions are permitted for the simultaneous possession of more than one firearm on a single occasion, we conclude that—under the rule of lenity—defendant could only lawfully be convicted on one count. Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

Factual and Procedural Background

On 4 June 2015, a couple who lived on Union School Road in Macon County called the police after hearing several gunshots around 4:40 a.m. and observing two unknown persons walking in their front yard. At approximately 5:15 a.m., Alice Bradley, a school bus driver, was conducting a morning safety check at nearby South Macon Elementary School when she noticed two individuals in the parking lot. The two individuals were later identified as defendant and Kathryn Jeter.

Bradley testified that as she was getting into her car, defendant held up a silver firearm and pointed it at her. The two individuals then began running toward her car. In response, Bradley drove her vehicle in their direction and swerved around them. Defendant and Jeter began walking toward an athletic field behind the school building. When she returned to her bus to radio for help, Bradley noticed that a black bag had been placed on the front seat of the bus.

Deputy Audrey Parrish of the Macon County Sheriff's Office responded to the initial call and began to search for defendant and Jeter on the school grounds. She located the two individuals walking near a fence by an athletic field behind the school and noticed that they were approaching the school building. Deputy Parrish identified herself as a law enforcement officer and ordered defendant and Jeter to stop walking and turn around. Defendant turned toward Deputy Parrish, raised the silver pistol, and pointed it at her. Deputy Parrish heard defendant pull the trigger, but the gun did not fire. At that point, she fled to her car.

Additional law enforcement officers arrived around 5:30 a.m. After a struggle, during which officers had to employ a Taser three times, defendant was taken into custody. As he was being detained, officers observed a silver handgun fall from defendant's waistband to the ground. Officers recovered several other firearms and knives from defendant's person. Ultimately, four firearms and two hunting knives were recovered at the scene. During a subsequent search of the school grounds, law enforcement officers discovered that the black bag that had been placed on Bradley's school bus belonged to defendant and contained an additional .22 caliber pistol.

On 29 June 2015, defendant was indicted by the Macon County grand jury on eleven charges: attempted murder, discharge of a firearm on educational property, assault by pointing a gun, cruelty to animals, possession of a knife on educational property, possession of a firearm in violation of a domestic violence protective order, and five counts of possession of a firearm on educational property.

Defendant was convicted by a jury of one count of attempted first-degree murder, five counts of possession of a gun on educational property, one count of possession of a knife on educational property, one count of cruelty to animals, and one count of assault by pointing a gun. Defendant was sentenced to three consecutive terms of imprisonment: (1) 170 to 216 months for the attempted first-degree murder conviction; (2) a consolidated term of six to seventeen months for three convictions of possession of a firearm on educational property; and (3) a consolidated term of six to seventeen months, suspended for 24 months of probation, for all remaining convictions. Defendant filed an untimely notice of appeal on 31 August 2017. On 27 March 2018, he filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Court of Appeals, requesting that the court review his convictions despite the fact that his notice of appeal was not timely filed. The Court of Appeals allowed his petition on 19 February 2019.

Before the Court of Appeals, defendant argued, inter alia , that the trial court erred by entering judgment on five separate counts of possession of a firearm on educational property, contending that N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) did not clearly authorize the court to enter judgment on multiple counts for the simultaneous possession of more than one firearm. In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeals held that N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) "is ambiguous as to whether multiple punishments for the simultaneous possession of multiple firearms is authorized." State v. Conley , ––– N.C. App. ––––, ––––, 825 S.E.2d 10, 15 (2019). Applying the rule of lenity, the Court of Appeals determined that the statute should be construed as permitting only a single conviction. Id . at 14–15. For that reason, the Court of Appeals reversed the judgments and remanded the case to the trial court for resentencing. Id . at 15.

The State filed a petition for discretionary review with this Court on 25 March 2019. We allowed the petition on 14 August 2019.

Analysis

The sole issue before us is whether a defendant can lawfully be convicted of more than one count of possession of a firearm on educational property based on his simultaneous possession of multiple firearms.¹ Subsection 14-269.2(b) of the General Statutes provides as follows:

It shall be a Class I felony for any person knowingly to possess or carry, whether openly or concealed, any gun, rifle, pistol, or other firearm of any kind on educational property or to a curricular or extracurricular activity sponsored by a school.

N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) (2019) (emphasis added). The crux of the dispute in this appeal centers around the use of the phrase "any gun" in the statute—namely, whether the statute's prohibition of possessing or carrying "any gun" on educational property means that separate punishments may be imposed for each gun possessed on a specific occasion or, alternatively, that only a single punishment may be imposed, regardless of the number of guns possessed.

This Court has not previously had occasion to determine this precise issue. The Court of Appeals, however, addressed a similar issue in State v. Garris , 191 N.C. App. 276, 663 S.E.2d 340 (2008), which was relied on by the Court of Appeals in reaching its result in the present case.

In Garris , the defendant was convicted of two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon after two firearms were simultaneously found on his person. Id . at 285, 663 S.E.2d at 348. The relevant statute provided that it was unlawful for any felon to possess "any firearm or any weapon of mass death and destruction." N.C.G.S. § 14-415.1(a) (2007). The Court of Appeals determined that the legislature's use of the phrase "any firearm" was ambiguous because "it could be construed as referring to a single firearm or multiple firearms." Garris , 191 N.C. App. at 283, 663 S.E.2d at 346. Thus, the court explained that it was "unclear whether a defendant may be convicted for each firearm he possesses if he possesses multiple firearms simultaneously." Id . Noting that "[t]he rule of lenity ‘forbids a court to interpret a statute so as to increase the penalty that it places on an individual when the Legislature has not clearly stated such an intention[,]’ " id . at 284, 663 S.E.2d at 347 (quoting State v. Boykin , 78 N.C. App. 572, 577, 337 S.E.2d 678, 681 (1985) ), the court in Garris concluded that the defendant could be "sentenced only once for possession of a firearm by a felon based on his simultaneous possession of both firearms." Garris , 191 N.C. App. at 285, 663 S.E.2d at 348.

In the present case, based upon our thorough review of the language of N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) and guided by our prior case law, we conclude that the result reached by the Court of Appeals was correct. We believe this conclusion is mandated by our decision in State v. Smith , 323 N.C. 439, 373 S.E.2d 435 (1988), in which we engaged in an analogous exercise of statutory interpretation with regard to a statute structurally similar to the one at issue here.

In Smith , the defendant, a bookstore clerk, was arrested for selling two obscene magazines and one obscene film to an undercover officer. Id . at 440, 373 S.E.2d at 436. The defendant was convicted of three separate violations of N.C.G.S. § 14-190.1(a), which made it unlawful to "sell, deliver or provide any obscene writing, picture, record or other representation or embodiment of the obscene." Id . at 440–41, 373 S.E.2d at 436 (quoting N.C.G.S. § 14-190.1(a)(1) (1986) ). The defendant argued that he could not lawfully be punished for three separate counts of the offense because the statute was ambiguous as to "the allowable unit of prosecution" when multiple obscene items are sold in a single transaction. Id . at 441, 373 S.E.2d at 437.

This Court agreed with the defendant's argument, reasoning that because the statute made "no differentiation of offenses based upon the quantity of the obscene items disseminated," an ambiguity existed as to whether the legislature intended to punish a defendant for the dissemination of "each obscene item" or, instead, "intended that a single penalty attach to the unlawful conduct of disseminating obscenity." Id . at 441, 373 S.E.2d at 436. Due to the...