{
  "id": 4165528,
  "name": "STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. TODD CHARLES BOGGESS",
  "name_abbreviation": "State v. Boggess",
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    "judges": [
      "Judges ROBERT C. HUNTER and ERVIN concur."
    ],
    "parties": [
      "STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. TODD CHARLES BOGGESS"
    ],
    "opinions": [
      {
        "text": "WYNN, Judge.\nThis is a second appeal for Defendant arising from the facts in this matter, which are set forth in State v. Boggess, 358 N.C. 676, 600 S.E.2d 453 (2004) (.Boggess I).\nThe first appeal arose from his capital trial in January 1997 wherein a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder on the basis of premeditation and deliberation; felony murder, with kidnapping and robbery with a dangerous weapon serving as underlying felonies; and murder by torture. In conformance with the jury\u2019s recommendation, the trial court imposed a sentence of death as to the murder, and sentenced Defendant to a term of 60 to 92 months\u2019 imprisonment for the conviction of robbery with a dangerous weapon.\nUpon review, our Supreme Court in Boggess I awarded Defendant a new trial based upon errors found in the jury selection process and a jury instruction pertaining to the meaning of a life sentence. Id.\nThis second appeal arises from his retrial wherein he was convicted of first-degree murder, solely on the theory of felony murder with kidnapping as the underlying felony; robbery with a dangerous weapon; and first-degree kidnapping. The trial court sentenced Defendant to a term of life imprisonment without parole. In this appeal, Defendant challenges only his first-degree murder conviction.\nAs stated in our Supreme Court\u2019s opinion in Boggess I, the State\u2019s evidence tended to show that Defendant and his girlfriend, Melanie Gray, were at Wrightsville Beach when they approached Danny Pence, who was interested in selling his Ford Mustang. The three rode for a test drive that resulted in the couple driving Mr. Pence to Durham.\nIn Durham, the couple drove Mr. Pence to a wooded area and, with his hands tied, led him to a partially constructed house with the chimney and fireplace exposed. Defendant told Mr. Pence to get into the fireplace, and unsuccessfully attempted to tie him. Thereafter, Defendant hit Mr. Pence on the head several times with a piece of floorboard and a brick, and covered Mr. Pence with pieces of sheet metal. The couple was later observed driving Mr. Pence\u2019s Mustang and pawning some items from the car. Mr. Pence\u2019s body was found in a wooded area by a group of teenage boys.\nAt his second trial, Defendant\u2019s main theory of defense was that he was in a dissociative state when he committed the killing in Durham. Defendant offered the expert opinion of forensic psychiatrist George Corvin, who testified that Defendant \u201cwas in a dissociative trance during the events that occurred in the woods off Terry Road\u201d in Durham. Dr. Corvin equated automatism or unconsciousness with dissociation, describing the latter as follows:\nDissociation as a symptom is basically the separation of normally connected mental processes, such as emotions, cognition, thinking, and also behavioral controls from full conscious awareness. . . .\nIt is a temporary, can be sudden, alteration in your level of consciousness, if you will. It can last anywhere from moments to minutes to hours and, in rare situations, people can have conditions where they literally lose complete memory of what and where they\u2019ve been for days even.\nDuring this period of time, during periods of Dissociation, an individual can engage in acts that they don\u2019t really have voluntary conscious control over or even full awareness of what they are doing.\nFollowing the evidence, Defendant requested instructions on the defenses of automatism/unconsciousness, but the trial court gave the instructions only as to first-degree murder by premeditation and deliberation and by torture, ruling that the defenses did not apply to felony murder. The trial court also refused to give an instruction, which Defendant requested, stating that a person found not guilty by reason of unconsciousness is subject to involuntary commitment in a mental health facility.\nIn this appeal, Defendant argues that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct that the unconsciousness defense applied to the felony murder charges, and failing to instruct that he could be involuntarily committed if found not guilty by reason of unconsciousness. We disagree.\nA trial court must give an instruction, at least in substance, that is a correct statement of the law and supported by substantial evidence. State v. Napier, 149 N.C. App. 462, 463-64, 560 S.E.2d 867, 868-69 (2002) (citation omitted). The automatism defense has been defined as:.\nthe state of a person who, though capable of action, is not conscious of what he is doing. It is to be equated with unconsciousness, involuntary action [and] implies that there must be some attendant disturbance of conscious awareness. Undoubtedly automatic states exist and medically they may be defined as conditions in which the patient may perform simple or complex actions in a more or less skilled or uncoordinated fashion without having full awareness of what he is doing.\nState v. Fields, 324 N.C. 204, 208, 376 S.E.2d 740, 742 (1989) (citations omitted). The practical effect of automatism is that the \u201cabsence of consciousness not only precludes the existence of any specific mental state, but also excludes the possibility of a voluntary act without which there can be no criminal liability.\u201d Id. (citations omitted).\nHere, Defendant argues that he was entitled to an instruction that the automatism defense applied to the felony-murder charges because Dr. Corvin\u2019s testimony established that he was in a dissociative state at the time of the killing, thus precluding the necessary \u201cvoluntary act.\u201d However, the felony-murder rule holds that a killing committed during the perpetration of a kidnapping is first-degree murder. N.C. Gen. Stat. \u00a7 14-17 (2007). \u201cAll that is required to support convictions for a felony offense and related felony murder \u2018is that the elements of the underlying offense and the murder occur in a time frame that can be perceived as a single transaction.\u2019 \u201d State v. Trull, 349 N.C. 428, 449, 509 S.E.2d 178, 192 (1998) (citations omitted). Thus, the underlying offense provides the voluntary act under the felony murder rule if \u201cthe elements of the underlying offense and the murder occur in a time frame that can be perceived as a single transaction.\u201d Id. (citations and quotation marks omitted).\nDr. Corvin expressed the following opinion regarding when, in the entire sequence of events, Defendant became dissociative:\nQ: I want to try to clarify one thing. You\u2019re saying while you can\u2019t precisely say when [Defendant] went into a dissociative state, it was somewhere in the woods off Terry Road..Is that fair to say?\nA: Yes, sir. Certainly, the way that I\u2019ve come to that opinion is that by the time they came to the foundation or the rock walls,-all of the triggers were in place and all of the stresses were at least well developed. Then the statement, of course, that he made early in those sequence of events all suggest that, by that time and during that period, he was dissociative.\nQ: But prior to that, he was not in a dissociative state. I mean well prior to it. I\u2019m not trying to trip you up with minutes\u2014\nA: I understand. There\u2019s certainly not clear indication that, say, for example, that while they were driving or while they were still at Wrightsville that he was in a dissociative state. It doesn\u2019t rule it out, but I have no reason to conclude that.\nThus, neither Dr. Corvin\u2019s testimony nor any other evidence in the record supports the theory that Defendant was in a dissociative state at Wrightsville Beach or any other point before reaching Durham. In other words, the automatism defense would not have been at play when Defendant committed the kidnapping. Because all events leading to the killing constitute \u201ca single transaction,\u201d no additional voluntary act was required to complete the felony murder. Therefore, the evidence did not support an instruction on the automatism defense as applied to felony murder, and we reject that argument.\nBecause we hold that Defendant was not entitled to an instruction on the defense of automatism, we summarily reject Defendant\u2019s contention that \u201cthe trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury that a person found not guilty based on automatism or unconsciousness could be involuntarily committed to a facility for the mentally ill.\u201d The record does not show evidence to support giving such an instruction.\nNo error.\nJudges ROBERT C. HUNTER and ERVIN concur.",
        "type": "majority",
        "author": "WYNN, Judge."
      }
    ],
    "attorneys": [
      "Glover & Petersen, P.A., by James R. Glover, for defendant.",
      "Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General William B. Crumpler, for the State."
    ],
    "corrections": "",
    "head_matter": "STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. TODD CHARLES BOGGESS\nNo. COA08-746\n(Filed 17 March 2009)\nCriminal Law\u2014 defenses\u2014automatism\u2014felony murder\u2014underlying kidnapping voluntary\nThe trial court did not err by failing to give an instruction on the defense of automatism in a prosecution for felony murder based on kidnapping where the defendant\u2019s expert evidence was that he was in a dissociative state, precluding a voluntary act, but not until the murder. In felony murder, the underlying offense provides the voluntary act if the elements of both offenses occur in a time frame that can be perceived as a single transaction, as here. Defendant was also not entitled to an instruction that a person found not guilty based on automatism could be involuntarily committed as being mentally ill.\nAppeal by defendant from judgment entered 1 June 2007 by Judge Ripley E. Rand in Superior Court, Durham County. Heard in the Court of Appeals 10 February 2009.\nGlover & Petersen, P.A., by James R. Glover, for defendant.\nAttorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General William B. Crumpler, for the State."
  },
  "file_name": "0770-01",
  "first_page_order": 802,
  "last_page_order": 806
}
