State v. Hooper

• Decision Date: 04 November 2022
• Docket Number: 382A21
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Ivan Gerren HOOPER
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

382 N.C. 612

879 S.E.2d 549

STATE of North Carolina

v.Ivan Gerren HOOPER

No. 382A21

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed November 4, 2022

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Jasmine McGhee, Special Deputy Attorney General, and Zachary Ezor, Solicitor General Fellow, for the State-appellee.

Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by John F. Carella, Assistant Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellant.

ERVIN, Justice.

¶ 1 The issue before the Court in this case is whether a request made by defendant's trial counsel that the trial court instruct the jury concerning the law of self-defense that was made after the conclusion of the jury instruction conference and prior to the delivery of the trial court's instructions to the jury properly preserved defendant's challenge to the trial court's refusal to deliver the requested instruction for purposes of appellate review and whether the trial court erred by denying defendant's request for the delivery of a self-defense instruction. The Court of Appeals held that defendant had waived the right to appellate review of the trial court's refusal to deliver a self-defense instruction on the basis of the invited error doctrine and that the trial court did not commit prejudicial error by refusing to deliver the requested self-defense instruction. After careful consideration of defendant's challenge to the trial court's judgment in light of the applicable law, we modify and affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision.

I. Background

A. Substantive Facts

1. State's Evidence

¶ 2 On either 1 or 2 March 2017, Ashley Thomas; her uncle Wilbert Reaves; the son that she and defendant had had together; and defendant attended the funeral of defendant's great aunt. Following the funeral, the group went to lunch, after which defendant asked to be taken to a store at which he could obtain cigarettes and purchase bullets, with Ms. Thomas denying both having provided defendant with any assistance in procuring ammunition and having had any conflict with defendant on that day. Similarly, Mr. Reaves testified that the group had gone to lunch together after the funeral, that Ms. Thomas had taken defendant to get cigarettes, and that defendant had asked "a couple of times [for Ms. Thomas] to purchase him bullets."

¶ 3 Ms. Thomas stated she and her son had visited defendant at the Reidsville Quality Inn on 4 March 2017 in response to a request that defendant had made to Ms. Thomas at her mother's residence that Ms. Thomas come to talk with him and allow him to visit with their son. Upon her arrival at defendant's hotel room, Ms. Thomas testified that she placed her son on the bed and took a seat in a chair by the door. After Ms. Thomas refused defendant's request to get out of the chair, defendant pulled up a chair "directly in front of [her] face" and began to question Ms. Thomas about her relationship with an individual with whom defendant assumed that Ms. Thomas had become romantically involved. When Ms. Thomas asked defendant "[i]s this really why you called me here?," defendant responded, "[w]ell honestly, I don't care. I don't want you anyway, so you can really dismiss yourself." At that point, Ms. Thomas rose to pick up her son and leave.

¶ 4 As Ms. Thomas rose, defendant "g[ot] in [her] face," pushed her, and began to punch her in the face and stomach before hurling her onto the bed as he continued to hit her face. As defendant did this, Ms. Thomas screamed for him to stop and to refrain from acting in this manner in front of their son. Ms. Thomas testified that, as he struck her, defendant stated that "[n]obody is going to be able to save you, but [your son], and even he is not going to be able to save you today. I'm going to kill you, bitch." At that point, Ms. Thomas claimed that she feared for her life.

¶ 5 After Ms. Thomas "nudged" defendant, the two of them stood up, at which point defendant threw Ms. Thomas on the floor and choked her with his hands. As she was being choked, Ms. Thomas kneed defendant in the groin, causing him to stand up, at which point she ran to the mirror in the rear of the hotel room "to see what [defendant] actually did to [her]." Ms. Thomas did not attempt to leave the hotel room given that defendant had forcibly detained her when she had attempted to depart from his presence at an earlier time.

¶ 6 After examining herself in the mirror, Ms. Thomas grabbed her phone and attempted to return a call that she had received from Mr. Reaves during the course of defendant's assault so that she could let him know that she needed help. As she did so, defendant knocked the phone out of Ms. Thomas’ hand, causing the phone to hit the wall of the hotel room and the screen to shatter. Although the phone remained functional, the damage that it had sustained made it difficult for Ms. Thomas to make things out on the screen.

¶ 7 Eventually, Ms. Thomas’ attention was drawn to the television stand, on which she saw a firearm. After she picked upon the weapon, defendant grabbed their son and held him between Ms. Thomas and himself. At that point, Ms. Thomas told her son to come to her and informed defendant that, in the event that he refused to let her leave with her son, she had no choice except to shoot. As a result of the fact that defendant acted as if he was going to lunge towards her, Ms. Thomas pulled the trigger at a time when the gun was pointed at the floor, at which point defendant exclaimed, "I've been shot," grabbed her hand, and asked that she relinquish possession of the weapon, a step that Ms. Thomas refused to take. However, when defendant asked "if I let it go, can I leave with you?," Ms. Thomas acquiesced in that request. As soon as defendant released her hand, however, Ms. Thomas grabbed their son, ran to her automobile, returned to her home, and contacted the Reidsville Police Department. Subsequently, Ms. Thomas told Mr. Reaves that "she had shot [defendant] because he was beating her."

¶ 8 Although a friend had given her a .22 caliber pistol about a week prior to 4 March 2017, Ms. Thomas denied having had that weapon in her possession at the time of her encounter with defendant at the Quality Inn. In addition, Ms. Thomas denied that she had had any intention of harming defendant at the time that she went to meet him at the hotel. On the other hand, Ms. Thomas had previously informed one of her friends that she had a weapon and had insinuated that she would use it to protect herself from defendant.

¶ 9 At approximately 5:15 p.m. on 4 March 2017, Ms. Thomas called the Reidsville Police Department to report an alleged assault that had allegedly occurred at the Quality Inn. Ms. Thomas told Officer Scott Brown of the Reidsville Police Department that she had gotten into an altercation with defendant, who is the father of her three-year-old son. At the time of her conversation with Officer Brown, Ms. Thomas’ face and neck were visibly bruised and swollen.

¶ 10 In the course of discussing the incident with Officer Brown, Ms. Thomas stated that, at defendant's request, she had visited him at a room that he had rented at the Quality Inn and that, following her arrival, defendant began questioning her about her relationship with another man. After defendant began acting in an aggressive manner, the two of them became involved in an altercation. Ms. Thomas stated that, when defendant attempted to obtain possession of a firearm that was already in the hotel room, she reached for it as well. According to Ms. Thomas, the gun discharged in the ensuing struggle, at which point Ms. Thomas returned home with their child. Officer Brown retrieved a Rossi .357 Magnum revolver that contained two spent shell casings and four live rounds from Ms. Thomas’ home.

¶ 11 At the time that Sergeant Kenneth Mitchell of the Reidsville Police Department spoke with Ms. Thomas, he observed that she had bruises across the bridge of her nose and eyes, bruises and red marks around both sides of her neck, a laceration on her cheek, and scratches running down her chest. On 8 March 2017, Sergeant Mitchell examined the hotel room in which the incident between defendant and Ms. Thomas had occurred and identified the location at which a projectile had hit the floor. In view of the fact that the carpet in the hotel room had been placed directly over a concrete floor, there was no way to identify the path at which that projectile had been travelling. Sergeant Mitchell determined that, based upon information that had been provided to him by Ms. Thomas and the damage that he observed to the bedspread, the box springs, and the floor, a bullet had ricocheted off the floor and struck defendant in his left calf. According to Sergeant Mitchell, the fact that both participants in the altercation admitted to having had their hands on the firearm and that no fingerprints had been detected on the weapon made it pointless for him to have any testing performed upon any of the blood that had been detected in the hotel room.

¶ 12 At 11:50 p.m. on 5 March 2017, Officer Jason Joyce of the Reidsville Police Department responded to a report that an individual who had sustained a gunshot wound had come to Cone Health Annie Penn Hospital. Defendant, who was the person in question, told Officer Joyce that Ms. Thomas had brought their child to the Quality Inn, that their conversation had turned into an argument, and that Ms. Thomas had pulled out a gun and shot him in the leg. According to defendant, after Ms. Thomas pulled out the firearm, he had advanced towards Ms. Thomas for the purpose of taking the gun from her, and that, as he did so, the two of them struggled, she shot him, and then she left the hotel room with their child.

2. Defendant's Evidence

¶ 13 The mother of one of defendant's sons, Marcelina Machoca, testified that, prior to 4 March 2017, she and Ms. Thomas had communicated using electronic messages after Ms. Machoca had driven defendant to the hospital to visit his ailing great aunt. Ms. Machoca testified that Ms. Thomas was...