State v. Liggons

• Decision Date: 06 January 2009
• Docket Number: No. COA08-238.,COA08-238.
• Citation: 670 S.E.2d 333
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Joel Amone LIGGONS.
• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals

670 S.E.2d 333

STATE of North Carolina v. Joel Amone LIGGONS.

No. COA08-238.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

January 6, 2009.

Appeal by Defendant from judgments and commitments entered 20 November 2007 by Judge Thomas H. Lock in Cumberland County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 28 August 2008.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General David N. Kirkman, for the State.

Geoffrey W. Hosford, Wilmington, for Defendant.

STEPHENS, Judge.

On 3 January 2006, Defendant Joel Amone Liggons was indicted for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. The case came on for trial at the 13 November 2007 Criminal Session of Cumberland County Superior Court. The jury returned verdicts of guilty on all charges. The trial court sentenced Defendant to consecutive prison terms of 133 to 169 months, 105 to 135 months, and 41 to 59 months. From these judgments and commitments, Defendant appeals.

Facts

In the late evening of 29 August 2005, Edith Underwood was driving in her car with Harold Pope on Highway 24. They had left a club in Fayetteville and were heading toward their home in Autryville. Their car was traveling at about 55 or 60 miles per hour. Underwood saw a black male on the side of the road wearing a grey sweatshirt and blue jeans and holding a rock, which he looked like he was about to throw. Then a rock crashed through Underwood's windshield, hitting the steering wheel, and hitting her in the head. She lost control of the car. Pope took control of the steering wheel and eventually brought the car to a stop on the side of the road. Pope covered Underwood's head injury with tissues in an attempt to stop the heavy bleeding. Then a man hit the side of the car and told Pope to get out of the car because he knew who had thrown the rock. Pope got out of the car holding a beer bottle in his hand.

The man grabbed Pope around the neck, threw Pope on the ground, and kicked him. Pope tried to hit the man with his beer bottle. Eventually, the man seized the beer bottle from Pope and started hitting him in the head with it. Underwood picked up the rock that had been thrown through the windshield, got out of the car, and threw the rock at the man, telling him to leave Pope alone. The rock hit the man in the hand. Underwood then kicked the man in the leg. The man hit Underwood in the face and knocked her to the ground. He rolled Pope over, took his wallet, and fled.

Underwood and Pope got back into the car and locked the doors. Pope called the highway patrol, who advised him to drive to the Fuel Zone gas station nearby. A few seconds later, two men showed up and began banging on the windows of the right side of the car. Underwood and Pope drove off and headed to the gas station.

An ambulance picked up Underwood and Pope at the Fuel Zone and took them to the hospital. Underwood had a severe skull fracture and underwent surgery to remove the pieces of bone and rock lodged in her brain. In addition to her head injury, Underwood suffered a broken nose and broken bones near her eye socket. After her brain surgery she spent a week in the hospital. Pope had hemorrhaging in his eye and head from being hit with the beer bottle and spent three days in the hospital.

The morning after the attack, Cumberland County deputy sheriffs located the crime scene on the shoulder of NC 24, not far from Interstate 95. They found a rock with what appeared to be blood on it, Pope's cigarettes glasses, and nitroglycerin pills, and a broken beer bottle.

A sheriff's department K-9 team followed a scent trail from the crime scene to a point farther up the road. The scent trail then turned left into the woods and continued to the edge of a neighborhood known as Bladen Circle.

Deputies found Pope's wallet, containing Pope's identification cards and credit cards, on the ground near Bladen Circle. The wallet also contained Defendant's driver's license.

In the early evening of 30 August 2006, while deputies were still in the neighborhood, Defendant went to the home of his former foster mother, Letha Ray. Ms. Ray noticed that his hand was swollen. He told her and Mildred Boykin, also of Bladen Circle, that he was the one who had attacked the two motorists the night before. He said he wanted to turn himself in. Ms. Ray called the Sheriff's Department. Deputies soon arrived and took Defendant into custody.

After he was taken into custody, Defendant advised Cumberland County Sheriff's Detective Steve Ranew that Antoine Henry Ackin was the one who had thrown the rock through Underwood's windshield. Defendant admitted to robbing Pope. He said that earlier in the evening, he and Ackin had been consuming marijuana and realized they needed more money for drugs. He told Ranew that they decided to commit a robbery by making a car swerve off the highway.

Defendant showed Ranew the injury to his left hand where he had been hit by the rock thrown by Underwood. He said Ackin took the wallet from Pope and then gave it to him. Defendant said he eventually threw the wallet into the woods off Bladen Circle at the suggestion of a friend. Prior to trial, Defendant recanted his statements about Ackin's participation in the crime.

After the State presented its evidence, Defendant moved to dismiss the charges. The motion was denied. Defendant presented no evidence and renewed his motion to dismiss, which was again denied. The jury found Defendant guilty on all charges.

I. Motion to Dismiss

By his first assignment of error, Defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the element of "intent to kill" from the assault charge pertaining to Underwood because the State failed to offer sufficient evidence that Defendant threw a rock toward her windshield intending to kill her.

When a defendant moves to dismiss based on insufficiency of the evidence, the trial court must determine whether there is substantial evidence (1) of each element of the crime charged and (2) that the defendant is the perpetrator. State v. Scott, 356 N.C. 591, 573 S.E.2d 866 (2002). "Substantial evidence is evidence from which any rational trier of fact could find the fact to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt." State v. Alston, 131 N.C.App. 514, 518, 508 S.E.2d 315, 318 (1998) (quotation marks and citations omitted). The evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the State, and the State must receive every reasonable inference to be drawn from the evidence. State v. Graves, 343 N.C. 274, 278, 470 S.E.2d 12, 15 (1996) (citation omitted). Whether the evidence presented is direct or circumstantial or both, the test for sufficiency is the same. State v. Vause, 328 N.C. 231, 237, 400 S.E.2d 57, 61 (1991); State v. Bullard, 312 N.C. 129, 160, 322 S.E.2d 370, 388 (1984). "Circumstantial evidence may withstand a motion to dismiss and support a conviction even when the evidence does not rule out every hypothesis of innocence." State v. Stone, 323 N.C. 447, 452, 373 S.E.2d 430, 433 (1988). If the evidence supports a reasonable inference of defendant's guilt based on the circumstances, then "it is for the jury to decide whether the facts, taken singly or in combination, satisfy [it] beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is actually guilty." State v. Rowland, 263 N.C. 353, 358, 139 S.E.2d 661, 665 (1965).

"Proof of an assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury not resulting in death does not, as a matter of law, establish a presumption of intent to kill." State v. Thacker, 281 N.C. 447, 455, 189 S.E.2d 145, 150 (1972). Instead, the intent to kill must be found as fact from the evidence. State v Ferguson, 261 N.C. 558, 135 S.E.2d 626 (1964). A defendant's intent is seldom provable by direct evidence and must usually be proved through circumstantial evidence. State v. Cauley, 244 N.C. 701, 94 S.E.2d 915 (1956). "However, the nature of the assault, the manner in which it was made, the weapon, if any, used, and the surrounding circumstances are all matters from which an intent to kill may be inferred." State v. White, 307 N.C. 42, 49, 296 S.E.2d 267, 271 (1982). The surrounding circumstances include the foreseeable consequences of a defendant's deliberate actions as a defendant "must be held to intend the normal and natural results of his deliberate act." State v. Jones, 18 N.C.App. 531, 534, 197 S.E.2d 268, 270, cert. denied, 283 N.C. 756, 198 S.E.2d 726 (1973).

Here, Defendant and his accomplice had discussed intentionally forcing motorists off the highway in order to rob them. Defendant or his accomplice then deliberately threw a very large rock or concrete chunk through the driver's side windshield of Underwood's automobile as it was approaching at approximately 55 or 60 miles per hour. It is easily foreseeable that such deliberate action could result in death, either from the impact of the rock on Underwood or from Underwood's losing control of her vehicle and becoming involved in a deadly automobile accident. Defendant's argument lacks merit and is thus overruled.

Defendant also assigns as error the trial court's denials of his motion to set aside the verdict of guilty on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and for a new trial. However, Defendant failed to argue this assignment of error in his brief, and it is thus deemed abandoned pursuant to Rule 28(b)(6) of the Rules of Appellate Procedure.

II. Jury Instruction on Acting in Concert

By Defendant's next assignment of error, he argues that the trial court abused its discretion in instructing the jury on the doctrine of acting in concert as no evidence supported this instruction.

"[A]n instruction about a material matter not based on sufficient evidence is erroneous. In other words, it is error to charge on an abstract principle of law not raised by proper pleading and not supported...