State v. Todd

• Decision Date: 16 August 2016
• Docket Number: No. COA 15–670,COA 15–670
• Citation: 790 S.E.2d 349
• Parties: State of North Carolina v. Paris Jujuan Todd, Defendant.
• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals

790 S.E.2d 349

State of North Carolina

v.Paris Jujuan Todd, Defendant.

No. COA 15–670

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Filed: August 16, 2016

Attorney General Roy A. Cooper III, by Assistant Attorney General Joseph L. Hyde, for the State.

N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., by Reid Cater, for defendant-appellant.

STROUD, Judge.

Defendant Paris Jujuan Todd appeals the trial court's denial of his motion for appropriate relief (“MAR”). On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his MAR because the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support a conviction and had this been raised during his prior appeal, there is a reasonable probability that defendant's conviction would have been overturned. After reviewing the evidence presented below, we agree, and conclude that the trial court should have granted defendant's MAR. Accordingly, we reverse the trial court's denial of defendant's MAR and remand to the trial court to enter a ruling granting defendant's MAR and vacating his conviction.

Facts

Defendant was convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon on 14 June 2012 and defendant appealed that conviction to this Court. In his first appeal, defendant raised two issues: “(1) the trial court erred when it denied defendant's motion for a continuance made on the first day of trial, and alternatively, (2) he received ineffective assistance of counsel.” State v. Todd , 229 N.C.App. 197, 749 S.E.2d 113, 2013 WL 4460143, *1, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 875, *1 (2013) (unpublished) (“Todd I ”). This Court found no error, and the Supreme Court denied defendant's petition for discretionary review. State v. Todd , 367 N.C. 322, 755 S.E.2d 612 (2014).

On 21 October 2014, defendant filed an MAR with the trial court. In the MAR, defendant moved that his convictions be vacated and a new trial granted, arguing that he “received ineffective assistance of appellate counsel in that counsel failed to argue that his case should have been dismissed for lack of evidence.” In addition, defendant's MAR requested “post-conviction discovery from the State under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A–1415(f).” On 15 January 2015, the trial court summarily denied defendant's MAR without a hearing. In its order denying defendant's MAR, the trial court noted as follows:

A review of all the matters of record, including the opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals which is attached, clearly demonstrates that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury verdict and appellate counsel rendered effective assistance to Defendant in his appeal.

The Appellate Court was clearly aware of the nature of the fingerprint evidence and determined that such was sufficient to support the Defendant's conviction. Otherwise, the Court was obligated to reverse the conviction upon the Court's own motion.

On 12 March 2015, defendant filed a petition for certiorari of the trial court's order denying his MAR, which this Court allowed on 27 March 2015.

Discussion

I. Denial of MAR

a. Standard of review

“Our review of a trial court's ruling on a defendant's MAR is whether the findings of fact are supported by evidence, whether the findings of fact support the conclusions of law, and whether the conclusions of law support the order entered by the trial court.” State v. Peterson , 228 N.C.App. 339, 343, 744 S.E.2d 153, 157 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). “The trial court's findings of fact are binding if they are supported by competent evidence and may be disturbed only upon a showing of manifest abuse of discretion. However, the trial court's conclusions are fully reviewable on appeal.” State v. Thomsen , ––– N.C.App. ––––, ––––, 776 S.E.2d 41, 48 (quotation marks omitted), disc. review denied , ––– N.C. ––––, 778 S.E.2d 83 (2015).

In the trial court's order denying defendant's MAR, which is the order at issue in this appeal, there are no findings of fact, and the trial court determined, as a matter of law, that the issues raised by defendant had been considered by this Court in his first appeal and that based upon this Court's opinion, the evidence was sufficient to support the conviction and thus his appellate counsel was not ineffective. We will therefore review this conclusion de novo .

b. “Law of the case” doctrine

Defendant argues that the evidence presented was insufficient to support his conviction, and that the “trial court erred by not granting [defendant's] motion to dismiss, and had this been raised on appeal, there is a reasonable probability that [his] conviction would have been overturned.” Before we consider this issue, however, we must determine whether the trial court was correct in its determination that the issues raised by the MAR had already been determined by this Court in defendant's first appeal.

In this case, the trial court determined:

A review of all the matters of record, including the opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals which is attached, clearly demonstrates that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury verdict and appellate counsel rendered effective assistance to Defendant in his appeal.

The Appellate Court was clearly aware of the nature of the fingerprint evidence and determined that such was sufficient to support the Defendant's conviction. Otherwise, the Court was obligated to reverse the conviction upon the Court's own motion.

Although it did not use the term, the trial court was recognizing the “law of the case” doctrine in its statement regarding this Court's prior review of defendant's case.

The law-of-the-case doctrine generally provides that when a court decides upon a rule of law, that decision should continue to govern the same issues in subsequent stages in the same case. The doctrine expresses the practice of courts generally to refuse to reopen what has been decided, but it does not limit courts' power. Thus, the doctrine may describe an appellate court's decision not to depart from a ruling that it made in a prior appeal in the same case.

Musacchio v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, ––––, 136 S.Ct. 709, 716, 193 L.Ed.2d 639, 648–49 (2016) (citations, quotation marks, and brackets omitted). Based upon the law of the case doctrine, if this Court's prior opinion addressed the sufficiency of the evidence to support defendant's conviction, neither we nor the trial court would be able to review it again and would be bound by that prior ruling.

Yet for the law of the case doctrine to apply, the issue presented must have been both raised and decided in the prior opinion.

[T]he doctrine of the law of the case contemplates only such points as are actually presented and necessarily involved in determining the case. The doctrine does not apply to what is said by the reviewing court, or by the writing justice, on points arising outside of the case and not embodied in the determination made by the Court. Such expressions are obiter dicta and ordinarily do not become precedents in the sense of settling the law of the case.

In every case what is actually decided is the law applicable to the particular facts; all other legal conclusions therein are but obiter dicta .

On the subject of obiter dicta , ... if the statement in the opinion was superfluous and not needed for the full determination of the case, it is not entitled to be accounted a precedent, for the reason that it was, so to speak, rendered without jurisdiction or at least extra-judicial. Official character attaches only to those utterances of a court which bear directly upon the specific and limited questions which are presented to it for solution in the proper course of judicial proceedings. Over and above what is needed for the solution of these questions, its deliverances are unofficial.

True, where a case actually presents two or more points, any one of which is sufficient to support decision, but the reviewing Court decides all the points, the decision becomes a precedent in respect to every point decided, and the opinion expressed on each point becomes a part of the law of the case on subsequent trial and appeal. In short, a point actually presented and expressly decided does not lose its value as a precedent in settling the law of the case because decision may have been rested on some other ground.

The rule that a decision of an appellate court is ordinarily the law of the case, binding in subsequent proceedings, is basically a rule of procedure rather than of substantive law, and must be applied to the needs of justice with a flexible, discriminating exercise of judicial power. Therefore, in determining the correct application of the rule, the record on former appeal may be examined and looked into for the purpose of ascertaining what facts and questions were before the Court.

Hayes v. City of Wilmington , 243 N.C. 525, 536–37, 91 S.E.2d 673, 682–83 (1956) (citations, quotation marks, and ellipses omitted).

Thus, “the law of the case applies only to issues that were decided in the former proceeding, whether explicitly or by necessary implication, but not to questions which might have been decided but were not.” Goldston v. State , 199 N.C.App. 618, 624, 683 S.E.2d 237, 242 (2009), aff'd , 364 N.C. 416, 700 S.E.2d 223 (2010). See also Goetz v. N. Carolina Dep't of Health & Human Servs. , 203 N.C.App. 421, 432, 692 S.E.2d 395, 402–03 (2010) (“The law of the case doctrine ... generally prohibits reconsideration of issues which have been decided by the same court, or a higher court, in a prior appeal in the same case.” (quotation marks omitted)).

As noted above, the trial court found that issues raised by defendant's MAR were barred by the law of the case doctrine. But for an issue to be barred, it must have been “actually presented and necessarily involved in determining the case” in the first appeal, so we must consider if it was both presented and “necessarily involved” in this court's prior ruling. In the first appeal, defendant raised two issues: (1) “that the trial court committed prejudicial error in denying defendant's motion for a continuance...