State v. McCoy, No. COA09-827 (N.C. App. 6/1/2010), COA09-827.

Decision Date01 June 2010
Docket NumberNo. COA09-827.,COA09-827.
PartiesSTATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, v. MARY DELOIS MCCOY.
CourtNorth Carolina Court of Appeals

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STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA,
v.
MARY DELOIS MCCOY.
No. COA09-827.
Court of Appeals of North Carolina.
Filed June 1, 2010.

Appeal by Defendant from judgment entered 27 February 2009 by Judge Franklin F. Lanier in Superior Court, Harnett County, No. 07 CRS 51838-39. Heard in the Court of Appeals 19 November 2009.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General K.D. Sturgis, for the State.

M. Alexander Charns, for Defendant.

UNPUBLISHED OPINION

ERVIN, Judge.


Defendant Mary Delouis McCoy appeals from a judgment entered by the trial court sentencing her to a minimum term of 251 months and a maximum term of 311 months imprisonment in the custody of the North Carolina Department of Correction based upon her convictions

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for second degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. After careful consideration of the record in light of the applicable law, we find no error in the trial court's judgment.

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I. Factual Background
A. Substantive Facts

At 3:36 a.m. on 1 April 2007, the 911 operator at the Harnett County Sheriff's Office received a call from Defendant. Although Defendant disconnected and called back several times, the operator was able to determine that Defendant had shot her friend, was naked, and had a weapon. About ten minutes later, the first of several deputies with the Harnett County Sheriff's Office arrived at Defendant's mobile home, which was located in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.

After arriving at Defendant's residence, the deputies made numerous attempts to convince her to come out of her mobile home. Defendant finally emerged wearing a nightgown and holding a .22 caliber revolver. The firearm seized from Defendant at that time had a light trigger pull that was "just above a hair trigger." At the time that she was taken into custody, Defendant smelled of alcohol and was incoherent. Although the detective in charge of the investigation tried to speak with Defendant when he arrived, she declined to provide any information. Twenty or thirty minutes later, however, Defendant stated that "he hit me, made me do things I didn't want to do, and I shot him. I killed him." Since she claimed to have been assaulted and raped, the investigating

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officers took Defendant to Betsy Johnson Memorial Hospital for examination and the collection of a rape kit.

At the time of the shooting, Defendant was fifty-six years old, five feet ten inches tall, and weighed about two hundred sixty-eight pounds. Defendant had been fully disabled since 1999. By 2005, Defendant had 20/60 vision in her left eye due to glaucoma and was totally blind in her right eye. In addition, Defendant suffered from a painful skin condition called hidrandenitis suppurativa, in which boils and abscesses formed on her body. As a result of this condition, Defendant regularly slept in the nude to avoid irritation stemming from contact between her clothing and her skin. Defendant had previously had extensive skin grafts and surgery in her vaginal area and on her buttocks because of this condition. Defendant's hidrandenitis suppurativa made sexual intercourse painful in the absence of lubrication and other preparations.

At the hospital, one examining nurse did not notice any signs of injury about Defendant's face, except that she appeared to suffer from some sort of skin condition. Another nurse thought that Defendant had an abrasion on her chin and might have had a bruise on one of her cheeks, but indicated that Defendant's dark skin color made it difficult to be certain. Upon her arrival at the hospital, Defendant "appeared very shocked, distraught, [and

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was] trembling . . . ." Defendant initially declined to answer any questions about what had happened, about any medications she had taken, or about her medical history. Subsequently, however, Defendant said that her former boyfriend "came over to my house and I told him to leave. He came in and beat me and raped me. I thought he left but he didn't. I shot him. I didn't mean to hit him and kill him." An analysis of the vaginal swabs taken during Defendant's medical examination revealed the presence of sperm. DNA testing revealed that the sperm found on these vaginal swabs matched that of the decedent.

When investigating officers entered Defendant's mobile home, they found the body of the decedent, Billy Ray Williams, lying face down on the floor in the hallway off of the kitchen in a large pool of blood. At the time of his death, the decedent was sixty-two years old, five feet ten inches tall, and weighed two hundred and twenty-one pounds. Spatter patterns and other blood markings in Defendant's mobile home indicated that, after being shot, the decedent moved away from the bedroom and toward the kitchen.

The decedent had died of a gunshot wound to the upper left side of his chest. The bullet that inflicted the fatal wound descended from the entrance wound, which indicated that the gun was fired from a position above the entrance wound. The decedent's wound would not have been immediately fatal, so he would have been

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able to walk a few steps before collapsing due to blood loss. The absence of powder residue and stippling on the skin around the wound established that the fatal shot was fired from a distance of more than two and one half or three feet. The medical examiner found a "potentially lethal" amount of cocaine that had been ingested relatively shortly prior to death, but no alcohol, in the decedent's blood.

With the exception of a single shoe, the decedent's body was unclothed. The other shoe was discovered just inside the doorway of Defendant's bedroom. The remainder of decedent's clothing was stacked "very neatly" on a dresser in the bedroom, with decedent's pants on top, then a shirt, then boxer shorts, then a second shirt, then socks.

According to the investigating officers, everything in Defendant's bedroom was in an orderly condition. The covers on the bed were pulled down. Two discolored pads lay across the fitted bed sheet, concealing a stain on the sheet beneath them. An empty Food Lion bag hung on a chair. There was no indication of forced entry and no sign of struggle at any point in the residence. An investigator for Defendant found what he described as pry marks on the back door.

The decedent had rented a bedroom in Defendant's mobile home on an intermittent basis from 1999 until around January or February

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2007, when he moved out and began living with Karl Beckwith and Joann Longmire. Since about 2005, the relationship between decedent and Defendant had been an intimate one. At trial, Ms. Longmire testified that the decedent moved out of Defendant's mobile home because he was not getting along with her anymore and needed to get away from her. Although Defendant called the Beckwith/Longmire home looking for the decedent frequently, the decedent tried to avoid taking her calls and would ask Mr. Beckwith and Ms. Longmire to tell Defendant that he was not there. According to Ms. Longmire, the decedent still spent the night with Defendant on an occasional basis.

Defendant called Mr. Beckwith and Ms. Longmire looking for the decedent several times on 31 March 2007 and requesting that he bring her "cabbage and oil." By the time of Defendant's final call that day, Ms. Longmire testified that Defendant was mad and said to tell the decedent not to come over "[b]ecause if he come over there, I'm going to kill his a—." Ms. Longmire testified that, when she relayed this comment to the decedent, he replied that "she done said that a hundred and one million times." Ms. Longmire recalled hearing a similar statement on at least one prior occasion.

Billy Harrington, who worked with the decedent on 31 March 2007, also testified that the decedent received quite a few phone

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calls during the course of the day; that the decedent was agitated while he was on the phone; that "whoever he was talking to, he didn't want to talk to them;" and that "he was really trying to get off the phone." After leaving the job site with the decedent at about 9:00 p.m. on 31 March 2007, Mr. Harrington and the decedent stopped at a Food Lion store, where the decedent bought some cabbage and Food Lion cooking oil.1 Although Mr. Harrington attempted to dissuade the decedent from going to Defendant's mobile home, the decedent said that it was something that he had to do.

At trial, Defendant testified that she consumed a large amount of liquor on 31 March 2007 before going to bed at about 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. Defendant denied calling Ms. Longmire, Mr. Beckwith, or Mr. Harrington earlier that day. According to Defendant, the decedent broke into her home that night. At the time that she awoke, he was "pulling at my body and stuff and hollering where in the h___ I been, who I been with, he could tell I had been with somebody because I didn't want to do anything." According to Defendant, the decedent beat her about the head and threatened to kill her after he raped her. In addition, Defendant testified that the decedent threatened to kill her. Defendant had "[n]ever seen him that angry and crazy before in [her] life." After the decedent

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raped her, she was scared that he was going to kill her. For that reason, she "reached over in the nightstand drawer . . . got the gun. . . . [and] [r]eached up . . . and fired."

During its cross-examination of Defendant, the State elicited evidence that Defendant had previously been convicted for possession of drug paraphernalia; that Defendant had three prior convictions for obtaining controlled substances by fraud; that in 2002, a week after receiving a prescription for Oxycodone, Defendant made an unscheduled visit to her plastic surgeon's office to obtain another prescription for Oxycodone; and that Defendant "snorted cocaine" two days prior to the decedent's death. The State was also allowed, over Defendant's objection, to introduce Defendant's medical record from her 1 April 2007 hospital visit...

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