Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

264 N.C. 482

141 S.E.2d 873

State v. Fletcher

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided May 19, 1965

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1965-05-19

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““The evidence, detailed above, obviously repelled defendant’s motion for judgment of nonsuit. It likewise restricted the jury to two verdicts: guilty of robbery with a dangerous weapon, i.e., a knife, or not guilty. State v. Parker, 262 N.C. 679 , 138 S.E. 2d 496 . Either defendant robbed Mulchi of $24.00 by the threatened use of a knife having a 2-3 inch blade or (a) no robbery occurred or (b) defendant was not the robber. Defendant’s contention here that ‘his Honor should have charged the jury on the guilt or innocence of the defendant as to the crime of larceny from the person’ has no substance whatever. There was no evidence of larceny from the person. In charging the jury that it might return a verdict of common-law robbery, the court gave defendant a more favorable charge than the evidence justified.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including State v. Black

Relies on Escobedo v. Illinois · State v. Parker · State v. Upchurch

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1965-05-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 2016

14 state decisions

60196519701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

PeR CuRiam.

¶1 The evidence, detailed above, obviously repelled defendant’s motion for judgment of nonsuit. It likewise restricted the jury to two verdicts: guilty of robbery with a dangerous weapon, i.e., a knife, or not guilty. State v. Parker, 262 N.C. 679, 138 S.E. 2d 496. Either defendant robbed Mulchi of $24.00 by the threatened use of a knife having a 2-3 inch blade or (a) no robbery occurred or (b) defendant was not the robber. Defendant’s contention here that “his Honor should have charged the jury on the guilt or innocence of the defendant as to the crime of larceny from the person” has no substance whatever. There was no evidence of larceny from the person. In charging the jury that it might return a verdict of common-law robbery, the court gave defendant a more favorable charge than the evidence justified. '

¶2 Defendant, relying upon Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S. Ct. 1758, 12 L. Ed. 2d 977 (1964), contends that his statement to the officer was inadmissible. The facts in this case bear no similarity to those in Escobedo. Here defendant was informed that he had the right to remain silent and that anything he said might be used against him. In our opinion Escobedo has no application “to the free and voluntary conversation” which defendant had with Detective Cox. State v. Upchurch, ante, 343, 141 S.E. 2d 528. Moreover, defendant here — unlike the petitioner in Escobedo — made no confession of crime. On the contrary, he stated that he had never seen Mulchi.

¶3 Defendant’s other assignments of error either are formal or point to no prejudicial error.

¶4 No error.

/264/nc/482 · .json · Public domain