State v. Watson

Decision Date04 May 2021
Docket NumberNo. COA20-147,COA20-147
Citation858 S.E.2d 354
Parties STATE of North Carolina v. Shanion J. Donta WATSON
CourtNorth Carolina Court of Appeals

Attorney General Joshua H. Stein, by Special Deputy Attorneys General Anne M. Middleton and Sherri Horner Lawrence, for the State.

Michael E. Casterline, Asheville, for defendant-appellant.

ZACHARY, Judge.

¶ 1 Defendant Shanion J. Donta Watson appeals from judgments entered upon a jury's verdicts finding him guilty of first-degree murder under the felony-murder rule, felony larceny of a motor vehicle, and felony child abuse inflicting serious mental injury. On appeal, Defendant argues that we must vacate his first-degree murder conviction for two reasons: first, because the predicate felony underlying his conviction under the felony-murder rule—statutory rape of a child under the age of 13—lacks an intent element, and second, because the jury acquitted Defendant of the predicate felony. After careful review, we conclude that Defendant received a fair trial, free from error.

Background

¶ 2 In December 2015, Chiquita Adams was living with her 11-year-old daughter, Tracy,1 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Defendant was Ms. Adams’ boyfriend. On the night of 24 December 2015, Ms. Adams and Tracy stayed in a hotel in High Point, North Carolina. Ms. Adams drove them there, and Defendant arrived at the hotel about an hour after Ms. Adams and Tracy checked in.

¶ 3 Tracy fell asleep at around 10:00 p.m. She awoke at approximately 2:00 a.m. and saw Defendant on the floor next to her bed. Defendant grabbed Tracy's leg, picked her up, and carried her to the bathroom; she could not scream because he had his hand covering her mouth. However, Tracy was able to grab a pillow from the bed and threw it toward her mother. After Defendant placed Tracy on the bathroom sink and told her to "be quiet," Ms. Adams opened the bathroom door. Tracy told her mother, "Please don't leave me," and Defendant told Ms. Adams, "don't believe her." When Ms. Adams approached Defendant, he knocked her to the floor and began hitting and choking her. After Ms. Adams lost consciousness, Defendant placed her on the bed and returned to the bathroom, telling Tracy, "pull your pants down." Ms. Adams awakened, and she and Tracy tried to exit the hotel room, but Defendant stopped them. Ms. Adams and Defendant then engaged in a prolonged struggle. At one point, Tracy tried to use her cell phone—a Christmas gift from her father—to call 911, but Defendant grabbed it from her and put it in his pocket.

¶ 4 While Ms. Adams fought with Defendant, Tracy was in the bathroom screaming and praying. When she looked out of the bathroom, she saw her mother on the bed, not moving. Defendant again told Tracy to pull her pants down; this time, she did, and Defendant had sexual intercourse with her on the bed. Eventually, Defendant let her get up, and she ran to the bathroom and locked the door.

¶ 5 At some point, Tracy fell asleep in the hotel bed. When she awoke at around 11:00 a.m., Defendant was still in the hotel room. Defendant told Tracy that Ms. Adams was asleep. Tracy touched her mother's body and noticed that she was not breathing. Tracy had "a feeling that she was dead" but "didn't want to believe it fully." Defendant told Tracy to take a shower, so she did, and when she came out of the bathroom, Defendant had left with Ms. Adams’ car keys. The hotel housekeeper came to the door and asked where Tracy's mother was. At first, Tracy told the housekeeper that her mother was asleep. Then she began to cry and said, "I don't know, I don't know. Help me, help me." The housekeeper called 911.

¶ 6 The High Point Fire Department responded to the call first. After reporting that Ms. Adams was dead, the firefighters waited for law enforcement officers and paramedics to arrive. Upon arrival at the scene, a High Point Police Department officer spoke with Tracy, who told him that Defendant was her mother's boyfriend and provided Defendant's name. She told police that her cell phone and her mother's car were missing, and that she had tried to wake her mother up that morning, but she could not rouse her. Tracy appeared to law enforcement officers to be in shock; she did not tell the officers about the altercation between Defendant and her mother or that Defendant had sexual intercourse with her.

¶ 7 A phone carrier assisted detectives in determining the location of Tracy's cell phone, which was "pinging" from an apartment in High Point. Upon their arrival to the apartment, the detectives spotted Ms. Adams’ tan Hyundai Sonata parked out front. A canine officer discovered Tracy's cell phone behind the apartments. A phone carrier forwarded to detectives text messages sent from Defendant's cell phone to his sister's cell phone. Detectives went to Defendant's sister's apartment, and she told them that Defendant had been there earlier that afternoon, showered, changed his clothes, and left. Officers collected Defendant's discarded clothes, which included clothing that matched the outfit he appeared to be wearing in video-camera footage captured when he left the hotel room. The shirt had a reddish stain on it.

¶ 8 An officer took Tracy to the Hope House Children's Advocacy Center ("CAC"). A child interviewer with the CAC told Tracy that her mother was dead. Tracy told the interviewer that she had been asleep all night and did not hear anything.

¶ 9 Detectives arrested Defendant at his sister's apartment at around 10:00 p.m. on 26 December 2015.

¶ 10 On 28 December 2015, the Medical Examiner conducted an autopsy of Ms. Adams’ body that revealed that she had facial lacerations ; bruises, abrasions, and lacerations in her mouth and on her tongue; and evidence of strangulation, including hemorrhages of the eyes, an abraded contusion on her neck, hemorrhaging in the muscles of her neck, and two fractures of the cricoid cartilage. The medical examiner concluded that Ms. Adams died as a result of strangulation.

¶ 11 On 28 December 2015, Tracy's father arrived in North Carolina from Texas to pick up Tracy, and Tracy moved to Texas to live with him. In Texas, Tracy struggled in school, did not have many friends, did not want to sleep in a room by herself, and suffered from panic attacks. Tracy still had not told anybody what had happened to her or what she saw. Finally, in July 2017, she told her father what had happened. During an interview at a CAC in Texas, Tracy told an interviewer that Defendant had raped her and killed her mother.

¶ 12 On 12 July 2016, a Guilford County grand jury indicted Defendant for larceny of a motor vehicle, child abuse inflicting serious mental injury, and first-degree murder. On 15 August 2017, a Guilford County grand jury indicted Defendant for statutory rape of a child by an adult, in violation of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-27.23.

¶ 13 Defendant was tried during the 24 June 2019 session of Guilford County Superior Court before the Honorable David L. Hall. Defendant represented himself, with standby counsel appointed. At the close of the State's evidence, Defendant moved to dismiss the charges for insufficiency of the evidence. The trial court denied Defendant's motion. The trial court instructed the jury on first-degree murder, on the bases of both premeditation and deliberation and on the felony-murder rule, with statutory rape as the predicate felony. The trial court also instructed the jury on second-degree murder, statutory rape of a child by an adult, felony larceny of a motor vehicle, and felony child abuse inflicting serious mental injury.

¶ 14 The jury convicted Defendant of first-degree murder under the felony-murder rule, felony larceny of a motor vehicle, and felony child abuse inflicting serious mental injury. The jury acquitted Defendant of statutory rape. After the jury rendered its verdicts, standby counsel renewed Defendant's motion to dismiss for insufficiency of the evidence.

¶ 15 The trial court consolidated judgment on Defendant's convictions for felony larceny of a motor vehicle and felony child abuse, entering one judgment on those convictions and one judgment on the conviction for first-degree murder. The trial court sentenced Defendant to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole for the murder conviction, and imposed a consecutive 19- to 32-month sentence for the larceny and child-abuse convictions. Defendant noticed appeal in open court.

Discussion

¶ 16 On appeal, Defendant contends that this Court must vacate his conviction for first-degree murder based on the felony-murder rule for two interrelated reasons. First, Defendant contends that the predicate felony of statutory rape of a child under the age of 13 cannot support a felony-murder conviction because statutory rape lacks an intent element. Defendant argues that, because statutory rape is a strict-liability offense, it therefore lacks an intent element, and only attempted statutory rape—which Defendant concedes does include an intent element—could support felony murder. However, Defendant argues that in the instant case, the trial court did not properly instruct the jury on the charge of attempted statutory rape, and therefore, neither completed nor attempted statutory rape could support the felony murder conviction.

¶ 17 Defendant also raises a second, related argument: he contends that his first-degree murder conviction must be vacated because the jury acquitted him of the predicate felony underlying the State's theory of felony murder. According to Defendant, because the jury was not instructed on attempted statutory rape, it could not properly consider that offense in support of its felony-murder verdict; thus, his first-degree murder conviction must be vacated.

¶ 18 After careful review, we hold that statutory rape sufficiently supported Defendant's felony-murder conviction on the present facts, and that he is not entitled to vacatur of his conviction based on his acquittal of the predicate felony. Having so concluded, we need not address Defendant's argument...

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1 cases
  • State v. Draughon
    • United States
    • North Carolina Court of Appeals
    • February 1, 2022
    ...when they reflect some logical flaw or compromise in the jury's reasoning." State v. Watson , 277 N.C.App. 314, 2021-NCCOA-186, ¶ 38, 858 S.E.2d 354. "[A] verdict is legally contradictory, or mutually exclusive, when it purports to establish that the defendant is guilty of two separate and ......

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