Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
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State v. Andrews, COA23-675, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Jul. 2, 2024)
In this Davie County case, defendant appealed his first-degree kidnapping with a firearm conviction, arguing error in denying his motion to dismiss for insufficient evidence. The Court of Appeals agreed, reversing defendant’s conviction.
In September of 2019, defendant was assisting an acquaintance in the search for her mother’s stolen car. The search resulted in defendant aggressively driving a van in pursuit of the victim, who was driving a similar vehicle to the stolen car. After a high-speed pursuit and several shots fired in the direction of the victim’s vehicle, the victim escaped and called law enforcement. Defendant came to trial for three offenses related to the pursuit, attempted robbery with a firearm, attempted discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle, and first-degree kidnapping with a firearm. The jury found him guilty of all three offenses.
Defendant argued in his motion to dismiss that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of confinement or restraint to support the kidnapping charge. Agreeing with defendant, the Court of Appeals explained “because some degree of restraint or confinement is inherent in felonies such as robbery with a firearm, kidnapping charges can implicate double jeopardy concerns where the restraint is the basis for both the underlying felony and the kidnapping.” Slip Op. at 5. Here, “defendant’s pursuit of the victim’s vehicle was part of the ‘necessary restraint’ to accomplish defendant’s objective of taking the victim’s vehicle from the victim at gunpoint.” Id. at 8. As a result, the court could not find a “separate, complete restraint or confinement” in evidence to support the kidnapping conviction. Id. at 9.