State v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 18 December 2001
• Docket Number: No. 106PA98.,106PA98.
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Christopher Lamar WILSON.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

556 S.E.2d 272

354 N.C. 493

STATE of North Carolina v. Christopher Lamar WILSON.

No. 106PA98.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

December 18, 2001.

Roy A. Cooper, Attorney General, by Robert C. Montgomery, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.

Staples Hughes, Appellate Defender, by Charlesena Elliott Walker, Assistant Appellate Defender, Durham, for defendant-appellant.

PARKER, Justice.

Defendant Christopher Lamar Wilson was indicted for the first-degree murders of C. Ervin Lovelace and Hugh Wayne Marcrum, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon. Defendant was tried capitally and was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder on the basis of premeditation and deliberation and under the felony murder rule. He was also found guilty of robbery with a firearm and conspiracy to commit robbery with a firearm. Following a capital sentencing proceeding, the jury recommended sentences of life imprisonment for the murder convictions. Accordingly, the trial court sentenced defendant to two sentences of life imprisonment to be served consecutively; the trial court also sentenced defendant to consecutive terms of forty years' imprisonment for the robbery with a firearm conviction and ten years' imprisonment for the conspiracy to commit robbery with a firearm conviction.

The State's evidence tended to show that on 30 November 1993, Cassandra Adams drove defendant; defendant's ex-girlfriend, Ashley Dye; and Shalan Wilson ("Shalan") to a fast-food restaurant. After Adams got her food, she and Dye sat on the hood of the car talking while defendant and Shalan talked to another man, Derrick Floyd, off to the side of the car. Dye told Adams that she "knew what [defendant] and [Shalan] had been doing" and that they should rob Little Dan's, a convenience store located in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, as "the camera was broken, they did not have a security system and they did not have a red button beside the cash register."

Later that day defendant told Dye that he had overheard her earlier statements about Little Dan's and asked her for more details. Dye reiterated the information; she added that the store had no safe and that the cash was kept in a bag behind a curtain underneath the cash register. Dye also stated that the next night, 1 December 1993, two women would be working and would not have a gun in the store. Dye further told defendant that if a man was working, he would have a gun. Defendant asked Dye where the gun would be if the man was working, and Dye responded that it would be under the cash register. After driving around for a time, Adams took Shalan, defendant, and Dye to their respective homes.

On 2 December 1993 Adams, Dye, and defendant spoke together on the telephone. Dye asked if Adams was "still going to do that tonight." Adams stated that she had not made up her mind yet. Adams picked up defendant in her mother's car around 9:00 p.m. that evening and told defendant that she was scared and did not want to go through with the robbery. Adams and defendant drove to Shalan's home, where Adams told Shalan that she was "scared and [she] thought something was going to go wrong, and [she] didn't want to do it." Shalan "started waving his arms around" and told Adams that they were going to go through with the robbery as planned and that she "was not going to chicken out on him." Adams, defendant, and Shalan then got into the car, whereupon Adams noticed that Shalan had a black nine-millimeter gun and a pair of gloves with him.

Adams, defendant, and Shalan then drove around for awhile, unsuccessfully attempting to locate Dye. They drove to Little Dan's, but Adams again became worried upon seeing the number of cars in the parking lot. Adams continued past Little Dan's and looked for Dye at an apartment complex near the convenience store. Again unsuccessful in her attempt to locate Dye, Adams drove past Little Dan's to a truck stop to buy gloves for defendant, noting that all of the cars in the Little Dan's parking lot were now gone. Adams then drove defendant and Shalan past Little Dan's again to see how many cars were in the parking lot. Adams turned the car around and let defendant and Shalan out of the car, then drove away to a nearby road.

After a short time Adams drove back to Little Dan's and saw defendant and Shalan running toward the car. After defendant and Shalan got back into the car, Adams began driving towards Gastonia, North Carolina. At that point she noticed that defendant had a .38-caliber gun with him and that Shalan had another gun, a "silverish, shiny revolver." When she asked what had happened, defendant stated: "He tried to play hero[,] and I had to pop him." Adams asked defendant whether the man was dead; and defendant replied, "They're dead." At this point Adams realized for the first time that two men were dead. Adams then drove defendant and Shalan back to their respective homes.

Earlier that evening, in response to information from a store employee that "an attempted holdup" might happen at Little Dan's that night, officers with the Kings Mountain Police Department alerted the store clerks and began surveillance of the store. The record is unclear as to who relayed this information to the police department. Officer Ron Creech went to Little Dan's with his partner, Officer Tessneer, around 10:15 p.m. on 2 December 1993. The officers began their shift surveilling the store from their car, which was parked two to three hundred yards from the store. After watching the store for approximately forty minutes, the officers noticed two black men come around the corner of the store and "trot" to the front door, crouching below the front windows. In response to this suspicious activity, the officers called for backup and began driving toward the store. The two men exited the store after approximately ten seconds, running in the opposite direction from which they had come. The officers lost sight of the men and began searching for them. Unable to locate the men, the officers returned to Little Dan's, where the backup units were arriving. The backup units continued searching for the suspects while Officers Creech and Tessneer entered the store to check on the clerks. The officers discovered the dead bodies of both clerks on the floor behind the counter.

The victims had been shot in numerous places, and the crime scene investigators observed blood on and around the bodies. The investigators also noticed a bullet fragment near one victim's head, a copper-jacketed bullet on the floor in a shopping aisle of the store, and a nine-millimeter Luger shell casing on the floor behind the other victim; an empty brown leather holster was also found underneath this victim.

The pathologist who performed the autopsy on victim Marcrum discovered three gunshot wounds: one bullet entered the right cheek, broke the mandible, and exited through the neck. A second bullet entered the right side of the back, hit the collarbone, and lodged at the base of the neck. A third bullet also entered the right side of the back; perforated the right lung, the aorta, the trachea, and the left lung; then lodged in the left shoulder. The pathologist opined that the third gunshot described above caused the victim's death.

The autopsy on victim Lovelace was performed by another pathologist, who discovered six gunshot wounds: one bullet entered the right temple and lodged in the brain, a second entered the left side of the face and lodged in the left side of the head, a third entered through the left lip and exited through the jaw, a fourth entered and lodged in the chest, a fifth went through the right wrist, and a sixth went through the left hand. The wound to the left hand was caused by a bullet fired from a range of less than four or five inches; whereas, the wound to the right wrist was caused by a bullet fired from less than thirty inches away. The pathologist further opined that the bullet entering the victim's brain was the cause of death.

While the record is unclear as to how officers came to suspect that defendant and Shalan were involved in the murders, on the morning of 3 December 1993 investigators went to defendant's home with warrants for his arrest. Defendant was taken into custody and consented to allow investigators to search the home. The investigators located a jacket belonging to defendant with three.38-caliber shells in one pocket. When asked where the gun was, defendant responded that he had thrown it out the window of the car on an entrance ramp to Interstate 85 after the robbery. Defendant was then taken to the police station, where he made a statement to the investigators. Officers were unable to locate the gun during a later search of the area indicated by defendant.

Also on the morning of 3 December 1993 investigators served an arrest warrant on Shalan. When they took Shalan into custody, investigators discovered a loaded Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol between the mattress and box spring of the bed on which Shalan had been lying. A later search of Shalan's residence revealed a Colt Diamondback .38-caliber revolver in a foot locker. Danny Goforth, the owner of Little Dan's, testified that the Colt revolver found in Shalan's home belonged to Goforth and had been taken from its normal location behind the counter at Little Dan's.

A forensic firearms and tool-mark examiner from the State Bureau of Investigation determined that the copper-jacketed bullet found in an aisle in the store and the nine-millimeter casing found behind victim Marcrum's body were fired from the nine-millimeter Luger semiautomatic pistol seized from Shalan's home. The investigator further determined that the .38-caliber bullets retrieved from victim Lovelace's face and chest and from victim Marcrum's chest and shoulder could not have been fired from the gun stolen from Little Dan's or from Shalan's nine-millimeter; however, these bullets were...