Issue

Preservation of issues—insufficiency of evidence—two separate assault charges—general motion to dismiss

Summary

In a prosecution for multiple crimes arising from a domestic violence incident between defendant and his wife, defendant failed to preserve for appellate review his argument that insufficient evidence supported two separate charges of assault by strangulation rather than a single charge arising from one, continuous offense. Under Appellate Rule 10(a)(3), which precludes defendants from raising sufficiency of the evidence issues on appeal unless a motion to dismiss is made at trial, a motion to dismiss for insufficiency of the evidence is offense specific, meaning that a motion to dismiss one offense preserves all sufficiency issues with respect to that offense alone. Consequently, defendant's general motion to dismiss at trial did not preserve his argument regarding the two assault charges, especially where he announced to the trial court that he was excluding those specific charges from his motion.

Summary from the North Carolina Reports digest (official subject index). Read the opinion →